Wants government to move to take advantage of Caribbean Association of Roads

The restoration of a national highway laboratory that infuses a higher level of geo-technical capability into road construction in Guyana is indispensable to the creation of a durable and cost-effective national road network according to one of Guyana’ leading civil engineers.

Managing Director of the engineering consultancy firm Terrence Fletcher and Associates, Terrence Fletcher, told Stabroek Business in an exclusive interview earlier this week that a new highway laboratory would enable the factoring in of necessary testing and research considerations the would lay the foundation for a more reliable network of roads across the country.
Fletcher, who is also Chairman of the Caribbean Association of Roads, a regional body recognized by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM0 the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and the University of the West Indies (UWI) told Stabroek Business that he believed that it was desirable that critical considerations associated with road design and building, including soil testing be the responsibility of a national body rather than be left in private hands. ”At the moment that important responsibility is almost totally in private hands, with minimal public sector involvement.

Fletcher, a former President of the Guyana Association of Professional Engineers (GAPE) told Stabroek Business that the critical importance of a reliable road network to Guyana’s economic development warranted much more official attention to the creation of a resource base capable of delivering a durable network of roads, pointing out that repetitive repairs to poorly constructed roads is proving far too costly for Guyana.

Among the concerns raised by Fletcher during his interview with the Stabroek Business was the use of roads by overloaded vehicles which practice he felt was not being addressed sufficiently seriously. Overloaded vehicles, he said, were resulting in the accelerated deterioration of the carriageway of the roads, and was, inter alia, of great concern to funding agencies.

Meanwhile, Fletcher told Stabroek Business that he believed that the Caribbean Association of Roads could play an important role in the creation of a more reliable and safer region-wide road network. He said that Association, which was launched in 2007 and is concerned with various critical road-related issues, is a body in which Guyana should be paying much more interest. Fletcher named Barbados and Jamaica as two CARICOM states from which the Association was receiving “good support.”

According to Fletcher CARICOM, UWI and ECLAC are among the regional and hemispheric organizations that have supported the work of the Association.

Asked whether he felt that Guyana currently had the human resource capacity to meet the challenge of providing a national road network Fletcher said that while he believed that the potential existed, BUT there was a need for more training.  Fletcher told Stabroek Business that he believed that the Government of Guyana could be much more proactive in taking advantage of regional training and development opportunities.

Meanwhile, Fletcher told Stabroek Business that he believed that plans that originated in the early 1990’s to create a road network between Georgetown and Port-of-Spain via Venezuela could bear fruit by 2015. The plan involves the creation of a network of interior roads and crossings which had already been initiated through a public and private fund-raising initiative during the 1990s.