Julius Espat Clashes with UDP Over Flood-damaged Highway

Floodwaters may have torn through sections of the Coastal Plain Highway, but the political storm is now just as intense. As criticism mounts over the project’s resilience, Minister of Infrastructure Julius Espat is pushing back, calling the opposition’s claims misleading. The UDP argues the highway was compromised despite reported cost savings, but Espat says those savings were real, and he’s now laying out exactly how much was saved and where that money went.

 

Julius Espat, Minister of Infrastructure Development

“That is politics. You twist the truth to suit your needs. At no time did we say we saved twenty-eight million dollars on the Coastal Highway, at no time. In past interviews we have done in 2023/2024, we noted that we had some savings on the Coastal based on the contingency. When you have a contract there are many factors involved in the contract. One is the administrative cost. Two is the cost of the contract itself, the work to be done. You have social issues you have to deal with and then you have a warranty to put in place which has a cost and then we put in what we call a contingency factor, a sum of money left aside incase during the construction period there is anomalies and stuff that needs attention and then you communicate with IFIs and use that. In the Coastal there was no need for it, because while the construction occurred there was no problem. So we requested from the IFIs to use  the contingency fund to pave the Manatee entrance and the one to Mollins River. That is where that contingency fund was used.”

 

The Coastal Plain Highway Project was officially opened to the public in 2023.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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