PURE nonesense - the Peter O'Connor column

The announcement that the Programme to Upgrade Roads Efficiency (PURE) is going to be re-started, has come without giving any specific or acceptable reason why PURE was suspended in the first place. 

And while the suspension was in effect for over four long months, roads everywhere continued to deteriorate and collapse.

Repairs and maintenance are dynamic activities. Delays in implementing them do not leave the situation in “neutral”, but rather cause a geometric increase in deterioration, breakdown and failure. And all of this has been sharply increased by the ongoing rainy season. 

In short, the old adage: “a stitch in time saves nine” applies dramatically in the case of the suspension of PURE. The actual cost of the now-dramatically increased scope of works nationwide will have increased dramatically by the ongoing failure to conduct the imperative repair works. 

The political costs would have been similarly disastrous to the Peoples’ Partnership government, as demonstrations across the land have indicated.

I can speak personally for the effects of the shutdown along the Arima Blanchisseuse Road, a route which I regularly use. 

As one enters the valley from Arima, they face massive potholes and surface failures, all directly caused by the massive trucks, heavily loaded, speeding out of the quarries in Verdant Vale. 

These trucks, which have the “S” Special License emblazoned on their fronts, may actually not legally be allowed on this road, but that needs to be confirmed. Simply put, these trucks are too heavy for this road. 

As the road surface cracks under their weight, it rapidly crumbles and creates massive, muddy depressions in the road. This rapid deterioration will induce landslips as water soaks into the road substructure below the broken surface.

After passing the quarries which so scar the landscape and indirectly destroy the road, one climbs up through the valley, dodging the potholes which were actually under repair until PURE was close down in early December. 

Upon reaching the christophene plantation at the five mile mark, one begins to dodge the landslips, both below and above the roadway. The deforestation here is the cause of the slips, but this is still difficult for the average Trini to accept. 

PURE was attempting to conduct repairs in preventing slippage when the programme was shut down. But the permanent works in this area, and indeed beyond the thirteen mole mark near Morne la Croix, and along the branch road to Brasso Seco, go far beyond “maintenance”. Major works are required, and there is no sign of implementation.

And obviously what I have described along the Arima Blanchisseuse Road has been happening all over the country. The abandonment of PURE, to the gross disadvantage of citizens everywhere, and to the Treasury-- for the deterioration has accelerated tenfold while PURE was being audited-- was a gross misjudgment in my view. No satisfactory explanation has been provided as to why the audit required the programme to shut down, what the audit really revealed, or what advantage it was to anyone at all.

But the PURE programme was not the only pure nonsense we have been forced to swallow recently. 

National Quarries Limited, they who help to destroy the Arima Blanchisseuse Road, made some startling revelations following the public outcry against their unnecessary further desecration of the area. 

Their very outspoken chairman, who postures as having some management strength and competence, gave the following reason for NQL expanding their operations into full view of the pristine Asa Wright Nature Centre:

The government’s operating contract with Sunway (Calder Hart’s family business) permits Sunway to produce the stone from within the previous boundaries of the works. 

However, Sunway was mixing overburden with the stone to increase quantity, but this was reducing quality, and the end product was unacceptable. Unable, under their Chairman and management team, to instruct Sunway to meet the specification required, NQL allows them to continue, and brings in bulldozers to destroy a mountainside of forest instead, so NQL will try to produce the required stone on their own, while Sunway will apparently continue to be allowed to produce the inferior stuff. What pure nonsense is this?

NQL has further announced a major PR campaign to tell us how environmentally conscious they are, and how important they are to our economy. I will comment further when I examine their propaganda. 

However, since this allegedly wonderful company loses millions of dollars annually, while other quarries make their owners rich, and Calder Hart and Sunway profit on our losses (yes, “our losses”, we own NQL), they want to spend money on useless propaganda. 

May I suggest that NQL concentrate on dealing with Sunway, improve the quality of production and try to make a profit instead. Please Prime Minister, hearken to common sense sometimes, in lieu of interest groups that appear to be misleading you.