THE Ministry of Public Works and Communication Friday conducted a successful trial run of the Supenaam stelling, which will commence operations shortly. This new development debunks media reports that the newly designed facility is useless.
The ministry stated that the attempted trial run on March 17 by the M.V. Torani was aborted after the vessel arrived at the stelling during the crest of an abnormally high tide and rather than wait a couple of hours for the water to recede, a practice which is not uncommon at other stellings, it was decided to divert the ferry to the Adventure stelling. The practice run Friday lasted for approximately 40 minutes and saw the off-loading of 18 vehicles that were predominantly trucks, most of which were in the 10-15 ton range. There are some remaining minor issues that are being addressed at the facility.
The ministry is advising that the structure it took over was already built, and it was not involved in the design phase or the construction of the facility. However, all of the repair works undertaken were done with the intention of strengthening crucial areas, making it compatible with the vessels that ply the area. The original plan did not account for several key characteristics of the vessels that would have directly necessitated a change in the design of critical components of the stelling, and did not take into account key factors of the environment, further compounding the fact that it was poorly executed.                                                                                                                                                       Public Works engineers are as a result faced with a series of significant technical limitations that are directly inherited from the original design, two of which are that the current system can only accommodate a maximum load of 16 tons and vessels that ply the Essequibo route can only utilize the facility during a specific window as far as tidal conditions are concerned, the ministry advised.