Local Content Chamber president Lennox Sirjuesingh has taken issue with the announcement that a Danish firm is being considered to address the collapse of the Manzanilla/Mayaro road. Works and Infrastructure Minister Dr Surujrattan Rambachan and Director of Highways Roger Ganesh, according to media reports, are hoping to get the Danish Hydraulic Institute (DHI) to address and find a permanent solution to the collapse of the road, the main artery between Sangre Grande and Mayaro.
On Sunday, a large portion of the road collapsed after floodwaters and high tides undermined the foundation. But yesterday, Sirjuesingh expressed outrage that locals were not being given a chance.
“I am shocked to hear that. There is nothing from Golconda to Point Fortin that we cannot do, yet it has been given to a foreign contractor. In this case I am hearing that we are not even being given an opportunity to bid,” he said.
DHI, according to media reports, was instrumental in solving various problems in New Orleans when the US port city was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. For this reason, the ministry is considering the firm to address the Manzanilla road collapse. “Who determines that this Danish or foreign firm is capable and we are not? And in such a short space of time?” Sirjuesingh asked. “You cannot deny local content, you are doing that at your own peril. The world is not sitting down and taking this kind of biased award of contracts again. “Local content is a right of the people and it is the right for our contractors to be given an equal opportunity.”
Board of Engineering T&T member and local engineer Mark Francois shared Sirjuesingh’s concerns. “There is absolutely no need to bring in expertise from outside the region to deal with this and we have people here who are competent to deal with it,” Francois said. Francois said when DHI worked in New Orleans a vast majority of the work was done by the US army’s corps of engineers.
He said in the Manzanilla project local engineers should take the lead role and foreigners should be brought in only to fill any gaps in the local expertise.