200 New Vehicles Monthly; Hon Harold Charles makes hard push for roadways

By Dana Malcolm

Staff writer 

#TurksandCaicos, May 30, 2023 – With the ever increasing Turks and Caicos population and the increasing road usage that comes with that, Harold Charles, Governor’s Appointed Member to the House of Assembly says it’s time for the Government to invest seriously in new roads.  He was speaking on May 18th during the National Budget Debate.

“Residents are tired of replacing tires and rims due to these deficiencies in infrastructure and unfortunately, most of those bad roads are in our local areas. I’m asking the government to give some serious attention to our communities,” he said.

Exacerbating the problem Charles said were the at least 200 new cars coming into the Turks and Caicos each month; figures he says are backed up by the Traffic Department.

He recommended that the more than $3 million allocated for a road improvement in the next financial year (2024/25) should be moved to the 2023/24 financial year because it was desperately needed.

“A million is not going to cut it for this year, so the $3.9 million projected for 2024.  I’m hoping we can find a way to move it forward.”

Listed as projects that needed attention:  Millennium Highway, Industrial Drive and others.

“If we don’t start investing some serious money to build new roads we are going to run into some serious traffic jams.”

He maintains that additional roads are also needed to ease traffic congestion. Only weeks prior, a fatal car accident shut down sections of  Providenciales’ roads, stranding tourists and residents who were trying to get to the airport.

He maintained that waiting until the 2024/25 budget year was too long for such an important problem, describing the current plan proposed by the government as minuscule.

Charles also addressed the renovations of roads and bridges which he said had been in the budget last year but for some reason were not done and carried over into the budget this year.

“I hope these new projects actually materialize.  We live in a world class destination and our roads, parks and housing should reflect this.”