Minister of Transport, Works and Water Resources, Ian Gooding-Edghill has given motorists the assurance that the numerous potholes across the island will be patched.
Speaking on the radio call-in programme Down To Brass Tacks today, Gooding-Edghill revealed that the recent heavy rainfall had negatively impacted the poor road infrastructure.
However, he revealed that Government had purchased three additional pothole patchers, which would allow for work to begin on repairing the damaged roads.
He said the Ministry of Transport and Works (MTW) now had a total of five pothole-patching machines.
“The ministry has acquired three pothole patching machines and they have been deployed across the island. We were fixing obviously the numbered highways, the lettered highways and then we are into the commercial areas.
“We had significant rainfall this year and while we were able to contain flooding, we only had areas of localized flooding because of all of the brilliant work done by the men and women within the MTW drainage department. But what has happened is that the road infrastructure was left in a deplorable state for some time and not casting blame, but truth be told, the road infrastructure is not what it should have been and repeated requests for the ministry before we took office to fix and repair some of these roads were left [unanswered]. It falls now to us to execute significant infrastructural repairs and we are doing it,” Gooding-Edghill explained.
He said despite the COVID-19 pandemic which had crippled Government’s finances, fixing roads was still one of the administration’s priorities.
Gooding-Edghill asked Barbadians to be patient during this time as there was much work to be done.
He also encouraged persons to communicate with the MTW’s depots and to call to inform them of any potholes that needed to be patched.
“We are also not only patching roads, we are deploying the patching teams in crews. For example in Christ Church we have taken a position that we will send maybe three machines in there so that we can go and fix as many roads in probably a two-day period and come out, then we go to St Philip and we come around,” the minister said, while pointing out that work had started two weekends ago.
“It is a lot of work to be done in a short time and at the same time there are some roads that we are paving. We are doing a lot of work in that respect and I think it will pay significant dividends.”
