Details on Road Rehabilitation in Infrastructure Report

Two weeks ago the Leader of the Opposition, Patrick Faber asked the Ministry of Infrastructure Development to make public the details of the contracts and scope of road works to rehabilitate roads damaged by Hurricanes Etta and Iota. These hurricanes affected not only Central America, but dumped significant amounts of rain over Belize, causing one of the worst floods in history in the Cayo District. Minister of Infrastructure Development, Julius Espat, explained that the Ministry had provided the Contractor General a complete report of the twelve point five million dollars that was spent for the emergency spending. He said the Ministry’s Report would be made public after the Contractor General had released his own report on the projects. News Five has a copy of the Ministry’s Report and Marion Ali has the breakdown of the details.

Marion Ali, Reporting

The Ministry’s roughly three hundred-page report indicates that the rehabilitative works under the emergency project took place across the country on paved and unpaved roads and required different levels of intervention.

The contracts given out were said to reflect the exact needs as identified by a damage assessment that the Ministry conducted. But, the Ministry indicated in its report that the road works were quick fixes to the urgent needs that arose at the time in order to restore interconnectivity as quickly as possible; so long-term work has to be sorted out to keep the roads usable.

Those contracts were awarded to a total of twenty-eight contracts for a variation of works. The Ministry states that all of the work has been completed, except for the Philip Goldson Highway between miles eight and a half to mile eleven, which is about eighty percent complete. That project, being carried out by Rodla Construction Company Ltd., is valued at one million, nine hundred and thirty thousand dollars.

The total spent on the projects was twelve point five million dollars, and this was in addition to one million one hundred and ninety-one thousand seven hundred dollars that the previous government had approved. While in some cases more than one contract was awarded to the same contractor, each contract outlined its own scope of work. The Ministry indicated in the Report that in the awarding of the contracts, its goal was to cut costs in transportation and mobilizing the Ministry’s equipment. Contracts that were worth over fifty thousand dollars were approved by the Financial Secretary and vetted by the Contractor General.

Completion certificates, with the amount of money spent and before and after pictures are also included in the detailed Report. It lists the roads that were compromised by persistent rainfall due to the passage of Hurricanes Etta and Iota in late October and early November of 2020, just before the Government changed.

The Ministry said the problem was compounded by the fact that a number of the feeder roads had not been any kind of maintenance or rehabilitation for years. The problem prevented farmers from accessing their farms.

Marion Ali reporting for News Five.