Point highway construction to resume

Rowley and Energy minister Franklin Khan.

The latter announced that construction on the highway to Point Fortin would resume next year while Rowley promised Siparia residents that they would be given Borough status.

Khan told hundreds of PNM supporters representing Penal, Fyzabad and Siparia districts that government would commence construction of the highway next year. Supporters gathered on Siparia junction, greeted the news with thunderous applause amidst steelband music by the Siparia Diatonics steel orchestra. The much maligned highway project halted in May by the government after the contractor, Brazilian construction firm OAS Construtora, was declared bankrupt in March last year.

The highway project had stopped at Grants Road, Rousillac, but Khan told the meeting that the project would continue from the Golconda leg, into Debe in Penal and Fyzabad. He continued that the highway would then merge into the La Brea area to link from Rousillac, then into Point Fortin.

Yesterday, following a ribbon-cutting ceremony for opening of the Freeport/Couva Parallel Access Road Phase 1, Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan confirmed, “Yes, definitely next year the highway construction would resume. There are certain packages we are working on and the idea is to get local contractors involved.” The minister however, said that having regard to a litigation matter, the arbitration into which the government recently won, there was need for his ministry to get legal clearance before work resumes. Government would soon resolve the issue over the controversial Mon Desir section of the highway, Sinanan said. Khan told the meeting at which PNM candidates contesting districts in the Siparia and Penal/Debe Regional Corporations were presented to the crowd for the November 28 Local Government elections, that his ministry intends to re-activate land oilfields that are either dormant, or, had been capped in Fyzabad, Siparia, Los Bajos, Santa Flora and Palo Seco districts