M.I.D.H. Commits to Maintain Sugar Roads throughout 2022/2023 Sugar Crop

Julius Espat

The 2022/2023 sugar crop officially kicked off on Tuesday.  Previously, there have been concerns about the conditions of sugarcane roads. Farmers have persistently complained that sugar roads become impassable following incessant rains.  Today, we asked Minister Espat about his ministry’s efforts to assist sugarcane farmers throughout the season with these roadways. Here is what he told us.

Julius Espat, Minister of Infrastructure Development

“You can’t stop the complaining cause it’s true, but our equipment is in right now and they will be there until the crop is over. We have always done that every year. This year has had more rain than we are used to. And we have more roads that we have not been dealt with for years that we are dealing with and we are working within a certain budget and most of our area reps are understanding, understanding of that, that we are fulfilling their dream, one hundred percent definitely not. We cannot in two years and fix what was abandoned for thirteen years and in fact maybe more than thirteen years. We have to do what we can, how we can. What I can tell you is that the ministry is stronger. The ministry is definitely more efficient. We have hired more people in our staff to do in-house paving, in host grading. We have more equipment than we, in fact, we didn’t have any. Now, we have more equipment than before that. And we get a budget again for equipment five million a year. And this year we’re asking for more cars, we need more graders, we need more bulldozers, we need more trucks, we need more backhoes, need more rollers. Those are expensive equipment and and we’re building. And we are hoping that we can at least reach fifty percent capacity within the Ministry and the other fifty we do as a subcontract work in the private. So if we achieve that fifty percentI I think we will, we’ll do really well and but there’s a lot lots of work to do.”