Liberia Will Be a Construction Site in Two Months, Giddings Says

MONROVIA — Public Works Minister Roland Layfette Giddings said on Monday that Liberia will become a construction site in the next two months as contractors begin work on several major road projects, including paving the Tapita-Zwedru highway.

"So I'm just saying that the entire country will be turned into a construction site in the next two months," Giddings told a budget hearing at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, where ministries are presenting their spending plans for the draft 2027 budget.

Giddings tied the timeline to the end of the rainy season. He said contractors on several projects are mobilized and waiting for dry weather.

Three contractors will begin paving the Tapita-Zwedru road by the end of this month, Giddings said. Procurement is underway for the final section into Zwedru, which he said he hopes will start by the second quarter. By then, he said, four contractors will be paving the corridor, closing the gap in the paved road to the southeast.

On the Roberts International Airport road project, Giddings said the government has put $5 million into the work. Work is ongoing, he said, though not aggressively because of the rains.

"By the dry season, a lot of work will take place on that project also," he said.

Giddings said the first phase of a community gravel road program, funded with $1 million, is close to 90 percent complete. A second phase, also funded with $1 million, has four or five contractors ready to start. He said he hopes to see full-scale work in communities by the end of this month.

On the Robertsport corridor, Giddings said work is about 36 percent done and the contractor is waiting for the dry season to complete a 12.5-kilometer stretch.

Not every program is ready to move. Giddings acknowledged that the ministry's city streets program is behind schedule. He said the program was "initially conceived" with legislators, so ministry engineers had to go into the field to gather data before a full procurement process could begin. He said he expects to finalize the contracts with the Ministry of Finance within about a month so money can reach contractors.

The city streets program covers 13 counties, Giddings said. Grand Cape Mount and one other county are excluded because a concession arrangement is expected to pave community roads there.

Giddings also warned that illegal mining is undermining infrastructure along the country's road corridors. He said it has already forced the ministry to roughly double the length of one bridge, initially designed at about 450 feet, and move it to a new site. Without that change, he said, "the bridge was never going to be launched."

"And we don't protect the other infrastructure we have, especially the bridges along those corridors; we might end up losing them," Giddings said. "That's something we have to take seriously."

He said he has raised the problem with the Minister of Mines and Energy.

Giddings described an 850-foot bridge meant to connect Bopolu City with Bong County as 67 percent complete, with its abutments and center piers finished.

Read the original article on Liberian Investigator.