Costa Rica Blogs - Newsfeeds

by Rod Hughes
NICOYA, GTE.—Good news came from the Ministry of Transport and Public Works (MOPT, its Spanish acronym) today, answering the dearest hopes and dreams of residents, farmers and tourists in the Northwestern province of Guanacaste: MOPT will send road repair equipment to be spotted in strategic locations around the province for ready repair of the–until now—wretched road system.
The state of Guanacaste roads is the most frequently-mentioned criticism in hotel guest book comments, but other benefits from more frequent road work will be felt by farmers whose trucks will need far fewer repairs and even in real estate values. Rampant real estate development is, indeed, one of the most important factors in the roads’ deterioration as trucks carrying construction supplies have increased traffic several fold.
Nor will the province have to wait long for the pilot plan to be put in play—the Comptroller General’s office, the government’s contracting watchdog agency, has cleared the way for direct contracting of repair work, cutting several miles of red tape by the decision.
Work could start as early as July, Minister Karla Gonzalez told the daily paper La Nacion last week. “With the purchase of new equipment, MOPT will have what it needs to give the roads continuous repair,” she said, “The roads will always have the presence of our equipment and we’ll save time in being able to resurface them.”
The new equipment will include trucks, backhoes, graders and loaders, Gonzalez said. MOPT will cut downtime (an Aquilles heel in Costa Rica where periodic maintenance in the past has not been a prime priority of MOPT) by contracting companies to journey to the province to provide repairs to the far-flung machinery.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 10:42 am and is filed under Business and Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.