When will Albert and Regent Streets be paved? For those of us who work here in the heart of downtown, the delays have become infuriating, and the daily dust inhalation make life miserable, if not almost unliveable. But there’s hope on the horizon...or at least that’s what they say! The Ministry of Works has taken over the civil works and will now move decisively towards a fixed deadline. Boots Martinez today told us that mistakes were made in previous timelines given out by the City Council.
Hon. Anthony Boots Martinez,
“Jules two weeks ago our project execution unit has taken away this project. We have written City Council and say it is our turn to come in and finish, we will ask you to step aside basically and we will keep you informed, you are a part of the team, but we will be taking over the physical work. We gave City Council, the Mayor, a copy of the plan, we keep her updated on the work and so we are taking over now.
The sidewalk portion, we’ve already given the contract. They’re already beginning to work. We will have a special contractor that will be maintaining until the hot mix portion is ready to go in. It is here now and it is here physically now so people can rest assure it is on the table now, not only talking to be on the table, it is on the table now and Albert and Regent Streets will be ready by the September celebrations.
We need to put this to rest and that’s why it is very important, this interview, so we can put it to rest. What happened that we knew, I think the initial foul up was the time frame given by Belize City who were not conscious of the amount of work that needed to be done for the preparation. So I have to be honest as I could, we stepped in just right in time. As a matter of fact, some of the works that should have been supervised by the City Council was in my view carelessly done but nevertheless for us to put hot mix, we need to make sure that all the ground is solid and everything is prepared for it.”
So to repeat, those works will begin later on in the week.
