The government has taken a decision to move ahead with the East Coast/East Bank bypass road using the funds already available; but this will mean landing the road from Ogle to Haags Bosch, near Eccles, instead of all the way to Diamond.
Indian funding of US$50M is available for the project but the previous government was seeking additional funding to fir the design it wanted.
“What was driving up that [project] cost was a number of connectors on the road,” Minister within the Ministry of Public Works Deodat Indar stated.
The Minister was quoted Friday by the Department of Public Information as saying the previously proposed connections would have been done through swamps and that was driving up the cost.
“For you to do those swamps, the cost of the earthworks pushed up the cost to $208Million. Remember, the Indian Government only had $50Million allocated to this project.
“So, we had to redesign the project to bring it to the original design,” Indar stated.
According to DPI, India has accepted the new design for the roadworks and “as such, the Government is moving ahead to implement the project that was stalled for 5 years under the former APNU+AFC Coalition administration.”
At the completion of Phase 1 of the project (Diamond to Haags Bosch), Minister Indar said the administration will forge ahead with the extension of the bypass road further up the East Bank of Demerara to Timehri.
