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Amid growing public frustration over the poor state of Saint Lucia’s roads, Infrastructure Minister Stephenson King has called for patience.
He said road rehabilitation is taking place in response to road deterioration over the past eight months, especially with poor weather conditions which have not assisted the road maintenance programme.
“What I would tell the general public is to be patient, to understand that we have to be prudent in our spending. We cannot afford to do road repairs or, as we call it, potholing, during the rainy season. That is a science. You cannot just go spending taxpayers’ money and wasting it away,” the former Prime Minister told reporters on Friday.
And he explained that the road programme is gradually unfolding.
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“If they look around, they will see as we speak that we have intensified our work in terms of potholing throughout the Island – on the West Coast, we’re on the West Coast today. We have been on the East Coast. We are going back on the Castries Gros Islet Highway sometime next week just to do some what I call, superficial work in terms of preempting the expansion of potholes,” the Castries North MP disclosed.
In addition, he noted that crews are conducting work in communities.
“We have been doing quite a bit,” King, also responsible for Transport, asserted as he gave a breakdown of road rehabilitation and reconstruction.
“In the new financial year we anticipate that there will be an increase in the allocation for road repairs, meaning maintenance work in potholing etc. We are increasing that and that in itself will help in the overall maintenance and management of roads in Saint Lucia,” he told reporters.
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