More road builders needed

As the Government continues its expansive multi-million dollar road rehabilitation programme, a lack of adequately skilled individuals is proving to be a challenge.

This assessment has come from Deputy Prime Minister Santia Bradshaw, who called on more Barbadians to equip themselves with the necessary skills to help fill the void.

She argued that Government has been able to secure financing to carry out the road rehabilitation programmes, but suggested that the absence of manpower expertise in some areas hindered the speeding up of that work.

“One of the challenges that we still continue to face is the inadequacy, sometimes, of having the additional persons within the market with plant and equipment to be able to respond to a lot of the roadworks that need to be done,” said Bradshaw.

“We have two main contractors who do milling and paving, and obviously the other contractors can only do smaller work unless they are reliant on those major contractors and form some relationship with them in order to be able to get the materials and expertise and skill to be able to execute those works.

“So there are capacity issues that we face as a country and certainly as a ministry . . . Over the course of the next few months we encourage people to enter the market to look at the opportunities that are available to assist the government in being able to roll out its road rehabilitation,” she said.

Last year, Government received around US$215 million (BDS$430 million) in financing to carry out road infrastructure resilience projects. This included US$115 million from the Exim Bank of China, US$50 million from the Latin American Development Bank (CAF) and US$50 million from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Government is also expected to put up funds for some of the road repairs.

Bradshaw, who was addressing a recent press conference, said the increasing calls from members of the public for roads across the island to be fixed as a matter of urgency was not lost on her and her ministry.

“We have seen the deterioration of the roads,” she said.

“We have heard the complaints repeatedly from the public and the ministry obviously has to be more responsive to the public in making sure that we are able to address those concerns,” admitted Bradshaw.

However, she insisted that apart from limited financial resources from time to time, there was still a need for “adequate contractors within the country to be able to respond to the roadworks that are needed to be done”.

“I have made the call for other construction companies to come into the market to do road building. We have been able to, as a government, acquire significant funding to get the road rehabilitation going but we equally need to make sure we expand the number of players in the market who can actually execute,” said Bardshaw.

“Equally, we are looking outside of Barbados and again encouraging those locally as well, to step up their game in terms of being able to provide an offering that meets the quality of the ministry as well,” she said.

“That is the message that I am giving to all entrepreneurs across the country because we do need to support the Government’s rehabilitation programme with the adequate companies who can enter the market to perform those works. I think the signal is out there that we have been able to acquire the financing to get these roads done, what we now need to make sure is that people appreciate that they have to build their own capacity and to meet the quality requirements of the ministry and to be able to execute those programmes,” she repeated. (MM)