Greeting staff and engaging in his first formal meeting with them, was the first order of business for new Minister of Transport and Works, Kirk Humphrey, when he arrived last week at MTW’s headquarters in the Goddard Building, Haggatt Hall, St Michael.
It was a day where Humphrey was updated on the ministry’s several work programmes and their related concerns.
However, prior to the meeting and in an interview with media, Minister Humphrey noted he was looking forward to the challenge and having been in Cabinet for the last seven and a half years, where a number of issues in Transport had been discussed, he already was aware.
“But now it is my turn to have the opportunity to help resolve some of the challenges and build on the opportunities,” he stressed, as he also thanked former Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Santia Bradshaw for her legacy and pledged to build on it.
Humphrey, adding that he was prepared for the task, said: “I’ve spent the last few days since I became minister reviewing some of the estimates, reviewing the briefs, and I have a perspective on some of the things that need to be done. Clearly, today is my first day so I don’t want to make any lofty, grand promises.”
“But I do give the public the assurance that all the issues that were raised with me, whether it was roads, whether it was traffic, whether it was potholes, whether it was drainage, that we would give them a concerted amount of energy and effort to resolve these issues and that the way we will approach it will be through consultation. The public will have the opportunity to weigh in on some of the solutions to these problems and hopefully we can come up with a solution that everybody agrees with.”
While acknowledging these were all related issues, Minister Humphrey remarked: “So, you can’t talk about roads and not talk about transport; you can’t talk about transport and not be talking about drainage… We have to look at the infrastructure.
We have to look at the systems, we have to look at the management, and we have to look at the personnel… but to treat it as part of a complete whole. And, to me, that’s how I’m going to go about my business; so, I look forward to the challenge.”
Accompanying Minister Humphrey was Minister of State in the Ministry of Transport and Works, Dr Romel Springer, who worked for four and a half years alongside Minister Bradshaw during her tenure.
Dr Springer noted that emphasis would continue to be on the Scotland District Rehabilitation Programme to ensure roads there are completed, the Cart Road programme, the Focused Road Programme and the building code standards. He said of the latter that MTW would be looking at these to see what can be used or revised, in order to build “resilience into the road infrastructure”.
“Road infrastructure and resilience go hand in hand at this current time because we see that we are operating in a context where there are definitely changes in the climate and we’re seeing by the patterns that are having a serious impact on our roads. Also, we are seeing a situation where we have increased vehicular loading on our roads – more cars, heavier trucks, heavier buses and we have to build roads that are equal to the task,” he stressed. (PR/MTW)
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