Road repairs coming to several St Thomas districts

Bad roads across St Thomas are set to be rehabilitated, the Government has promised.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport, Works and Water Resources, Santia Bradshaw, has given residents the assurance that during the coming financial year the Cane Garden to Bridgefield, Canewood to Proute, Hangman Hill, Carrington Village, Dukes and Jack-in-the-box+ and other roads, will be fixed.

“St Thomas does not have to worry, it is high on the priority for the Scotland District project rightfully so because I have heard the honourable member [Member of Parliament for St Thomas Cynthia Forde] mention time and time again how she has been neglected and I am making best efforts to ensure that we address a number of the road concerns across the community.

“There is also some widening of roads and footpaths in Stony Gully, which is near the Welches Post Office as well. Those are but a sample of some of the roads that we intend to start certainly in this financial year. I don’t know if it will address all of the issues in relation to the potholes and the worsening condition of the roads. But we have had to utilise the monies that have been made available to us in phases and to try to prioritise a number of the roads that we have been getting a lot of concerns from,” Bradshaw said.

Taking part in St Thomas Speaks Town Hall Meeting, at Lester Vaughan Secondary School, Minister Bradshaw also revealed that her ministry embarked on a pothole-patching programme recently, which she said is expected to continue at the start of the next financial year in April.

However, after listening to residents lament about the state of the roads in St Thomas, during the meeting, Bradshaw acknowledged that while the holes are being patched there is the existing challenge that the filling is being removed by rainfall.

She stressed that consistent rainfall has been preventing workers at MTW from being able to effectively upgrade the road infrastructure.

“The truth of the matter is we patch the holes, but as the individual said just now, one of the challenges we keep having with respect to climate change, St Thomas in particular, the rain will fall every single day. And it has made it very difficult. It has narrowed the window even more in terms of the time that we have to spend on being able to do road rehabilitation, road construction and pothole patching as well.

“We are getting a few more pothole patching machines to be able to ease some of the workers too at MTW because of course you all have been complaining about the slapdash way sometimes in which the pothole patching takes place. We are trying to get the machines to be able to allow the work to be done a lot cleaner and hopefully to last a lot longer,” she said. (AH)