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Sharpes road
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The government is negotiating an EC$80 facility to repair secondary, village, and feeder roads across the country, Minister of State in the Ministry of Transport and Works, Sen. Julian Francis, has announced.

Francis said negotiations are at the assessment stage and consultants will arrive shortly to do feasibility studies, but did not disclose the source of the money.Manage Ads

“… we are hoping that all this will complete by the end of the year, 31st December, and come January, February of next year, we can see the implementation of that 80 million dollar project,” he said on Tuesday.

Francis was speaking in Penniston, where he also announced that omnibus operators servicing the Redemption Sharpes-Kingstown route this week shelved their plan to withdraw their service because of the poor state of the roads in Central Kingstown.

The operators had planned to withdraw their services as of Tuesday.

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Francis said he met with the operators on Friday and promised he would have two contractors in Sharpes starting the repair works the following day.

Francis said that the omnibus operators said that if the repair teams were mobilised, they would have decided at their meeting last Sunday to cancel the planned strike.

“We met on Sunday afternoon at the Sharpes Community Centre, and by then, the evidence was on the ground that the two contractors are in fact working and they agreed that they will no longer strike, and we will continue to repair the roads up in Sharpes,” Francis said.

“Let me state clearly, roads are bad, generally. Let us accept that. And one of the main reasons that roads are bad generally is because what happened to us April 2011 and December 2013,” he said of the floods in those months.

“A lot of resources had to be diverted from on-going road maintenance programme into the rivers and cleaning the landslides and mud,” he said.

“I want to thank the minibus operators and I want to ask, generally, the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines to be patient,” Francis said.

 

 

11 replies on “Gov’t negotiating $80 million for road repairs — Sen. Francis”

  1. No the roads are bad because of gross neglect, and in some cases to spite neighbourhoods that support the opposition party.

  2. World cup time world cup time Election in the Air time to put your best game on. What a shame and disgrace, you mean to tell me the roads have been terrible for years and only because of van strike that you all decide to fixup? This is election time so you all will do anything to try and win. again.

    But you could build the great wall of China but you all are not going to win again. The bell must ring.

    OWN THE JAIL

  3. Urlan Alexander says:

    Julian Francis Oye! Unless the government is planning to go to a private entity to get that loan at a very high interest rate you will not get that money. Monies cannot be at the mobilising stage and be ready for February, Who are you trying to fool? If it is the loan is from a private entity it means that you and your cousin will mortgage the country just to win an election. I don’t know if your intelligence is on target or not but I hope you realised that it doesn’t matter what you and the PM do its all over.

  4. Welcomed news Mr Francis. I wish the government all the best with this one. These are difficult times we’re in its not easy to obtain those kind of funds. Kudos to the ULP! No matter whatever the government does there would always be opposition but do not be detracted stay focused. You are strong politically. This administration is more trusted than the NDP. You are committed towards the development of SVG not just lip service but country before party.

  5. Patrick Ferrari says:

    Let’s see … what else we can blame on the floods of 2011? Ah, yes, how about Chikungunya in 2014? Water. Mosquitos. Good enough or not it go do.

  6. Why is it that when anything needs to be built or repaired by government the monies have to be borrowed or begged?

    Why can’t such projects be financed internally using tax revenues? After all, hundreds of millions of dollars are raised annually via import duties, various stamp duties, income tax, departure tax, license fees, VAT, etc. We are taxed to death but still there is no money to do anything.

    We have just celebrated 35 years of independence. What a hollow celebration! Every day we become more and more dependent on outsiders — others countries; the World Bank; the IMF; private lenders; overseas migrants — for our very survival.

    “Independence” my foot!

  7. Pat Robinson Commissiong says:

    I like that word “facility”. I think I’ll go and ask my bank for a “facility”.
    So the roads are bad because of “what happened in in April 2011 and December 2013”. Dear Mr Francis, there’s a simple English word for what happened. It’s called FLOODS. And we had floods because rivers are not cleared of debris, and embankments which should have been built were not. There’s a whole lot of wire cages still sitting in the yard of the Public Works in Arnos Vale. Of course, so much grass has grown over them you might not be able to find them now. So what are you going to blame for not cleaning the rivers and for not building the embankments? Were resources for these necessary works were “diverted” to something else? Or did you just forget to budget for river defenses?
    It sounds to me like this government’s policy is “dig a hole to fill a hole”, and no amount of talking about a “facility” and “what happened: can hide that.

  8. Can someone update me on the Leeward Highway road repair project that had money allocated to it and assessments done? I believe the repairs are from Kingstown to Layou.
    I also need some idea on the cost of buying cars from Japan (online). If the cost of the cars is $3,800 what additional charges are involved when it get to SVG?

  9. Mr Palmer

    Add everything together car price, shipping, insurance etc then multiply it by about 120% and you have your answer

    Peter

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