Bad Weather Causing Pothole Plague
Works to begin when weather clears, Minister assures
The Fiji Taxi Association has raised its frustrations about the conditions of roads across the country following the extreme weather patterns.
Association general secretary Ashwin Lal said potholes have become a major issue and had called on authorities to ensure they were fixed as soon as possible.
“Road conditions are really bad; these are not only feeder roads but roads in the towns and cities. They are very bad,” Mr Lal said.
“We have avoided going onto feeder roads in this type of wet weather,” he said.
“Maintenance for our taxis is costly, and we just can’t afford to go and be stuck somewhere.”
He pleaded with the Fiji Roads Authority to have the roads fixed. Minister for Public Works Ro Filipe Tuisawau has asked the public for patience.
“Yes, we are noticing the potholes that have come about as a result of the weather conditions,” Ro Filipe said.
“The roads cannot be repaired during wet weather,” he said.
“We have to wait for the wet weather to pass before we can start with the maintenance and recovery work. Something we had noticed when we came in was that there was no budget for emergency road repairs.
“We have redone the FRA budget accordingly to work on those as soon as the weather clears. That is happening now.”
He said another issue they found was that there was no general standard of work in terms of maintaining the roads.
“We are working with FRA on how best we can address those, in terms of the standard of delivery of contracted road services; whether they are being monitored efficiently and effectively.
“For example, there used to be a lab in PWD that used to test the quality of road materials, etcetera, but that was removed when PWD was taken away. At the moment, I admit that it is not up to standard.” In a statement, the Fiji Roads Authority (FRA) said they were assessing and identifying resilient solutions for severely impacted road infrastructure.
Potholes were a major recurring issue, and the FRA said it was working round the clock to reinforce resources and manpower to bring the road network to serviceable levels. The FRA said that more strategic plans were being drawn up to implement a pothole reduction programme to minimise its recurrence.