Upgrade Coming for George Price Highway
Back in December, the Ministry of Works and M and M Engineering signed a contract for eleven million dollars to rehabilitate the Roaring Creek Bridge connecting the village to the capital, Belmopan, on the George Price Highway. It is part of a four-part series of rehabilitation works intended to cover the highway from Belmopan to Santa Elena Town. This afternoon, the contract with Teichroeb and Sons Limited for twenty-point-five million Belize dollars was signed for the second part of the project, which runs about nine and a half miles from Roaring Creek village to the Iguana Creek junction entering Spanish Lookout. News Five spoke to Minister of Works Rene Montero this afternoon in Belmopan following the signing.
Rene Montero, Minister of Works
“My focus has been to improve all the major highways in this country. And it will improve the livelihoods of people by creating jobs – as I mentioned it will create a hundred jobs – it will reduce travel time from San Ignacio to Belmopan and it will reduce costs.”
Reporter
“And what is the duration of the project – when does it start, when does it finish?”
Rene Montero
“It is expected to start immediately; there will be a mobilization period of about one month and it will take approximately eighteen months to be completed. As much as possible, we will try to ensure that there is not much inconvenience on that highway. And as I mentioned, that highway will have a lot of safety features so that we can reduce accidents. There will be a lot of culverts, a lot of signs; and all along [at] the major schools there will be pedestrian crossings and so on, so as to ensure that we reduce accidents along that highway.”
The Ministry is being supervised by IMC Worldwide of the United Kingdom. Funds for the project were obtained through a loan from the Inter-American Development Bank, a grant from the European Union – Caribbean Investment Facility (CIF), and the Government of Belize.