With the suspension of funding by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to the Sheriff Street/Mandela Avenue road expansion project, the contractor Sino Hydro Corporation Limited has begun to lay off employees.
In a letter posted on Facebook, the Chinese contractor informed employees that the decision to terminate their service is as a result of non-payment for three months by the Ministry of Public Infrastructure (MoPI).
Minister of Public Infrastructure, David Patterson, last night in a statement posted on his Facebook Page explained that the IDB took the decision to suspend disbursements to the project due to the numerous serious health and safety infractions as well as traffic management failures by the contractor. Patterson said that Sino Hydro was “warned on several occasions to rectify these issues but unfortunately to date the majority of failures identified have remained outstanding.”