After weeks of heavy rains, floods, and other inclement conditions, driving down St Thomas Street, dodging potholes became a skill that residents in the Kings Park area were forced to learn and dread, especially during the morning rush.
After BWS dug up the street early in the year, it took more than half a year for the city council to organize the effort to get the major thoroughfare paved. We met with the Deputy mayor today and asked him why they took so long to jump on this project, and when it will be finished.
Allan Pollard, Belize City Deputy Mayor
"Well as you know it's been a while to get it to this point of the starting phase we had the commitment from the contractor to come out here on Saturday after we had good weather conditions so we started the process of preparing this lane over here with ripping the existing street, compacting and all of the preparatory works in order to get it to pave standard. After speaking with them I think most of what they were explaining to me is that this specific process that we are doing here is a hot mix process so there is a lot of things that will be happening offsite a lot of preparations offsite so when those equipments come here it's just to prepare and it shouldn't be a long process of getting that layer of hot mix on the street itself so it should be a very quick process I think I believe and we are hopeful that in the coming weeks we will get that done."
"By all indications before Christmas time. The hardest thing is to mobilize and get them here and we have done that part. I know a lot of the delays that we were seeing were contractual delays getting all interested parties on board as you know this is a collaboration between the city council BWS and Digi and the ministry of course. We are past all that so now it's just to put in the actual work and we have gotten commitment from the contractor that they are here to work now so we don't see any delays happening."
While Pollard says that repairs will be done before Christmas, the council is now more at ease knowing that the job has started thanks to a group collaboration.
Allan Pollard, Belize City Deputy Mayor
"Yeah it's a relief for us of course but it is way more of a relief to the residents I mean it's not easy being a politician or being at the municipal body and getting all these concerns getting all these calls everyday. We see the posts on facebook we see all the comments but it's not an easy task it's not just something straightforward where we can just come out and start ripping the street and start paving it is a way more complex issue than that but we had some very very capable people leading this charge some excellent people from BWS The chairman the directors, we had Digi as well Digi on board and of course the Belize city council mayor and team to make sure we get this done for the residents a main thoroughfare as we understand and the last thing we want is our residents to continue to go through any potholes."
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