Warmington blames lack of maintenance for bad roads in Eastern Hanover
MINISTER WITHOUT Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, Clifford Everald Warmington, has blamed poor maintenance for the bad condition of many of the roadways in the constituency of Eastern Hanover, arguing that if proper maintenance was being carried out, the roads would have been in better condition.
Following an extensive tour of several roadways across that constituency on Wednesday, Warmington claimed that the purpose of the tour was to look at the condition of the roadways like he has been doing in many other constituencies, and to see how best he can assist the member of parliament with repairs and maintenance.
“There is a lot of repairs or rebuilding needed in the infrastructure as such, but one of the things I noticed is that a lot of the roads or places that we have driven, you can see that those places were asphalted before, but it got scoured, washed away and so on, because of lack of maintenance,” he told journalists during an interview following the tour.
“If the drains are maintained or were maintained, we would have better conditions on the roads where I have been, that I have seen out there,” he argued. He questioned whether the M ember of Parliament Dave Brown expects the Government to allocate funds to repair those roads, and if that is done what would be happening in the near future with regard to their maintenance.
“The issue is what happens after (funds are allocated for repairs of the roads) are we going to go back to the same thing we have before,” he questioned.
Warmington emphasised that if any allocation is going to be made, of what he describes as scarce resources, to any sector or any infrastructure in the country, the drainage system must be maintained.
He, however, refused to answer when asked if there is always an allocation for the maintenance of drains along the roadways across the country.
Warmington went on to outline several road infrastructure projects, which are slated to take place across the Hanover Eastern constituency, involving millions of dollars in expenditure, with some of those projects already on the way.
Brown, when asked about the lack of maintenance of the drains, as pointed out by Warmington, expressed the view that whereas the responsibility for drain maintenance is the responsibility of the National Works Agency (NWA), the allocations for that work is not done regularly enough.
“It’s difficult, you know the responsibility falls at the NWA’s feet, and I must be honest with you, with the resources that are available I think that they are doing their best,” Brown stated.
PROPERLY MAINTAINED
Pointing to the size of the Eastern Hanover constituency, Brown expressed the view that there is a necessity for a quarterly or half-yearly allocation for drain cleaning in that constituency, for them to be properly maintained.
“I think I said this some time in Parliament during my constituency debate, I think these (drain cleaning) programmes cannot remain to be a once per year maintenance programme. We have to start to look at a quarterly programme now or even a halfyearly programme, twice per year. I think that is the biggest problem, most of these drains are just not being maintained more than once per year, and the funds being allocated sometimes does not even go further than even half of the constituency,” Brown noted.
He pointed out that only when there are special situations calling for an input from the NWA through its mitigation programme will special allocations be made, but through the MP’s office such allocations for drain cleaning are made just once per year.