Contract awarded to pave Boom road

Residents of the Belize and Toledo districts will soon benefit from two major infrastructural projects. After many years of talk, the Burrell Boom Road between the Northern and Western Highways, will finally be upgraded and paved. Work will begin soon on the seventeen point three million dollar project, which will be carried out by Cisco Construction. It will include a new two-lane bridge over the Belize River as well as a realignment of the road to the east of where it presently passes through Burrell Boom Village. Cisco, the nation’s largest road builder, has successfully completed the upgrading of the Hummingbird Highway and is presently working on two sections of the Southern Highway between the Stann Creek Valley and Independence. The project is being financed by the government of Belize and a loan from the World Bank. When it is completed it will mean that heavy trucks travelling between Mexico and Guatemala, not to mention tourists arriving at the airport and vacationing in Cayo, will no longer have to pass through Belize City.

A contract to upgrade the coastal area of Punta Gorda was also signed on Monday, this time between Minister of Works Henry Canton and John Pollack of Phoenix Ltd. Phoenix will undertake to build drains, sidewalks and a seawall along the two-mile stretch of coast between Cattle Landing and the new Punta Gorda market. The four million dollar project, known as the Punta Gorda Foreshore Development, is being financed by Government and the Kuwait/OPEC fund for development. Work has already commenced and should be completed by May of next year.