-Opposition Leader’s claim ignores 68km of access roads, 62 bridges, and major ground works
Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed’s claim that the Government is preparing to spend $121 billion on “just 23 kilometres” of highway has been shredded by the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA), which has exposed major omissions in the cost comparison used to support the allegation.
In a video released Tuesday, Mohamed compared the estimated cost of the Versailles-to-Parika Four-Lane Highway with the $13.3 billion cost of the Eccles-to-Great Diamond highway and argued that the Region Three project should cost about $32.5 billion if the same cost per kilometre were applied.
But that calculation reduces a massive infrastructure programme to a single kilometre figure while ignoring the vastly different scale and engineering requirements of the two projects.
CH&PA said the Region Three project includes approximately 20.74 kilometres of four-lane highway, compared with 8.6 kilometres for Eccles-to-Great Diamond – a critical difference Mohamed failed to contextualise in his attack on the project.
The disparity becomes even more glaring when the width of the highway formation is considered.
The preparation base for Versailles-to-Parika is approximately 53.15 metres wide, more than twice the 25.99-metre preparation base for the Region Four highway. Its preparation and sand-filling footprint is approximately 1.1 million square metres, compared with about 223,500 square metres for Eccles-to-Great Diamond.
The Region Three preparation footprint is therefore approximately 4.9 times larger.
The main highway is only one component of the project.
The Versailles-to-Parika programme includes approximately 68.02 kilometres of access-road construction and upgrades, compared with just 0.8 kilometres under Eccles-to-Great Diamond.
Its bridge component is also significantly larger, with 62 prestressed reinforced-concrete bridges compared with 40 under the Region Four project. By nominal structural length, the Region Three bridges total approximately 4,050 feet, compared with 1,500 feet in Region Four.
Mohamed’s cost-per-kilometre calculation also callously ignores the approximately 31,100 metres of Prefabricated Vertical Drains (PVDs), planned for the project. These drains will reach depths of between 10 and 18 metres to improve weak and highly compressible coastal soils.
No comparable PVD ground-improvement component was identified in the Eccles-to-Great-Diamond project.
Versailles-to-Parika also includes approximately 3.82 kilometres of revetment works, alongside substantial culvert and drainage infrastructure.
CH&PA said these differences make Mohamed’s kilometre-for-kilometre calculation fundamentally misleading.
Mohamed’s comparison also takes the $13.3 billion contract value of a project initiated in 2022 and completed in 2023 and places it against the estimated cost of a project being undertaken several years later.
The cost of labour, fuel, aggregates, cement, steel, bitumen, transportation, and equipment costs have increased since then.
Mohamed has called for the contracts to be halted, describing the proposed expenditure as “the worst case of highway robbery and skullduggery” he has seen.
CH&PA rejected the premise behind the accusation.
“A comparison based principally on the headline values of two projects undertaken several years apart, while disregarding these substantial differences in physical quantities and engineering requirements, does not provide a technically sound basis for characterizing the Versailles to Parika Highway as ‘Highway Robbery,” the statement asserts.
The Versailles-to-Parika project has not yet been awarded, meaning the $121 billion figure cited by Mohamed remains an estimated programme value, not a final awarded contract cost.