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$32 million road works at Tuschen crumbles 8 months after completion
– Ministry launches probe
Kaieteur News – Some eight months after undergoing repairs to the tune of $32 million, the Tuschen New Housing Scheme’s main access road is in a state of deterioration.
This state of affairs was highlighted by some residents by way of a letter which was published in the Sunday edition of this newspaper. “It was only recently that the main road in the scheme was repaired and in a matter of months, you would be shocked to see the condition,” the residents said.
A deplorable section of the Tucshen New Housing Scheme main access road.
They noted that some parts of the road, especially the area where the Tuschen Police Outpost is located, are in a deplorable state which severely affects road users, mainly motorists who traverse the area.
“There are huge potholes, pools of water and mud,” the residents described in the letter.
According to the residents too, this may be a case of “bad work done by the contractor, coupled with negligence and poor oversight by authorities.”
Kaieteur News has since learnt that the contractor responsible for the road works is Fawaz Bacchus Construction, who was awarded the contract for a sum of $32,147,360.
According to previous reports, some $185 million in contracts were granted for road works in the Tuschen area. This was revealed in November, 2020 by Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodar Indar, during a visit to the area.
Addressing the residents’ concerns yesterday, Minister Indar told this publication that his Ministry is aware of the complaints and that an investigation has since been launched into the reports.
The Minister said that the road was never accepted by the Public Works Ministry from the contractor because its engineers were not happy with the works done. “We have not signed off on that road, when we looked at how the road was being done, I had asked for an inquiry on the construction of the road; the road was not yet signed off by our ministry as completed,” he asserted.
Minister Indar noted that the contract for the area was done under “sectional repairs” (meaning that only the sections that were bad had to be repaired). He noted that only a small part of the road was completed by Fawaz Bacchus Construction.
Currently, he revealed, engineers are on the ground assessing the situation to see how they could deal with the problem. When questioned about what action would be taken against the contractor, Minister Indar said that the contractor will have to remedy all sections of the road that have deteriorated.
Additionally, he said that the engineers on the ground are assessing the cost to fix another section of the road outside of the contractor’s border, which his Ministry has jurisdiction for.
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