BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, Dec. 22.17– MINISTER of Public Infrastructure, Hon. Ian Liburd has disclosed that the cause of the delay in the launching of the traffic lights in downtown Basseterre is a shipping error.
According to the Minister, the lights were scheduled to be completed by Friday last but on Thursday last, he received a message informing that there was a problem with the arrival of the control cabinets for the lights, and as such, the lights would not be completed on the December 15, as anticipated – thus cancelling their launch date for December 18.
Liburd told SKNVibes last evening that based on the status reports from the consultants and the Public Works engineers, they were happy to know that all of the lights would have been installed by the December 15.
Further complicating the problem, SKNVibes was informed that the cabinets are not slated to arrive in the Federation until December 27th.
“When we investigated it, there were some control equipment which are electronic equipment, which were being put on, or being booked as cargo to be onboard the American Airlines passenger service which comes here on a daily basis.
“He continued: “I am advised that they were shipped from California down to Miami. Once it got there, the shippers were advised that American Airlines would require Homeland Security approval to load the nature of such cargo.”
Alternative arrangements were being made to have them shipped with Amerijet, something the Minister noted should have been done in the initial phase, since the Cabinets were deemed Cargo and that company specializes with shipment to the Federation.
Liburd disclosed that officials at Amerijet informed that they could not accept until yesterday – and he was unaware if they Cabinets were able to be placed on the plane.
Meanwhile, when asked about laws governing the lights, the Minister explained that they are currently before the Attorney General’s Office.
According to Liburd, the proposed amendments were only recently received from the Traffic Department.
“We just learnt today that the proposed amendments only got to the AG’s office sometime last week. As a matter of fact, they had legislation from Jamaica…and it was just for us to adopt it. And we understood that they never forwarded the recommendations for amendments to the AG’s office until sometime last week.”
Many had questioned whether the government was ready to have the lights installed since there were no proper laws nor consultation held on the matter.
No date has been given on when the lights would be completed and turned on.
