Pothole fix coming

Minister of Public Works and Transport, Michael Lashley, is giving the public the assurance that any road damage caused from the heavy rains experienced as a result of the passage of Tropical Storm Harvey will be addressed as soon as possible.

He made the point during a brief interview with The Barbados Advocate yesterday afternoon to give an update on his Ministry’s work in the aftermath of the storm, which passed Barbados early Friday morning.

Minister Lashley indicated that teams from his Ministry had in fact been out with the first responders from the Department of Emergency Management as soon as the all clear was given, assessing any damage to the country. With that in mind, Lashley indicated that they were able to see firsthand the impact of the storm.

He said his Ministry is well prepared to handle any potholes that may have resulted from the rains and will be out in full force from Monday to start repairs.

“Only Monday this week we actually started again to mobilise teams from the depots across the island to address the potholes that exist, and we also
instructed the technical department to purchase additional equipment to help fix the potholes. So we were prepared well in advance. The fact is our repairs programme has been continuing and we know there are likely to be challenges now so we will be putting a team a place by Monday, but we will look to see what we can do over the weekend too to alleviate some of the problems,” he said.

He made the point while noting that the equipment to be purchased will include mechanical tampers used to help compact the materials into the potholes. While not giving an exact cost for those tools, the Minister made it clear that the pending purchase is necessary as they had experienced some challenges with some of the existing machinery and it is therefore “more economical”, he stated, to buy the additional equipment so that the staff of the Ministry could better execute their duties.

Lashley added that if all goes well they should be in possession of the tampers and any other necessary equipment within a week or so. (JRT)