REPAIRS to Burnham Drive in Linden, Region 10, a section of which completely collapsed a few weeks ago, causing several minor accidents, will commence this week. A contractor has already been awarded the project.

The ‘E’ Division Police Traffic Department was forced to barricade the road, and commuters were forced to use a nearby bypass. Region 10 Chairman Renis Morian has said the Ministry of Public Infrastructure would be repairing that section of the road, and he is happy that the engineers were able to have a first-hand view of the state of the entire road, thus they were able to observe its approximately six structural faults and several holes.

Burnham Drive is a main roadway, and is in dire need of major reconstruction, Morian has posited. “Burnham Drive needs a study; we need to move beyond the patching. The road is contiguous to the river, so…we believe that the road is being undermined by the river,” Morian said on Monday.

Burnham Drive, which starts at the Mackenzie/Wismar Bridge and ends at Christianburg, is used by many residents as an access to most of the communities on the Wismar shore, including Wismar Housing Scheme, Victory Valley, One Mile, Blue Berry Hill and Danjou Alley. Also located on the roadway are several schools, churches, the Linden Magistrate’s Court, the Wismar Police Station, all boat landings, the Wismar Market, several car parks, and several Government and private offices.

Given the magnitude of pedestrian and vehicular traffic traversing the road daily, there is fear that if extensive repairs are not done to the road earliest, fatalities may occur.

Earlier in the year, the Ministry of Public Infrastructure had repaired kokers and culverts along the road after it was observed that several parts of the thoroughfare were eroding into the river.

Senior Engineer Jermaine Braithwaite, while on a visit to Linden, told the Guyana Chronicle that the upper part of the tubes holding the kokers together had corroded, causing the road base to wash in and its foundation to be lost. And even though the upper layer of the road may seem sound, its foundation is void; and that is why some parts are sinking while visible holes will continue to expand.

The situation has since worsened tremendously with the volume of vehicular and pedestrian traffic traversing the road daily. Regional officials are hoping that this situation is resolved soonest.