THE Linden community became anxious on Wednesday after photos by Municipal Councillor, Lennox Gasper, surfaced on social media on the state of the bottom of the Wismar Mackenzie Bridge.

Gasper said the bridge is in need of urgent repair and while the top may look good, the bottom demands urgent attention.

The councillor has since taken his concern to the chairman of the Linmine Secretariat, Emit Alves, as well as Mayor of Linden. Carwyn Holland.

Holland when contacted on Wednesday said he does believe that the bridge is in dire need of emergency repairs and renewed his call for the construction of a second bridge.

“It needs urgent assessment, we can just go and look with the naked eye and make our assessment but we are not the specialist in that area, we need an engineer to tell us exactly what is going on and how much time it has,” he said.

With the Wismar/ Mackenzie Bridge being the only bridge linking the east and west of Linden, if it is shuts down to facilitate extensive emergency works or to construct a new one right at the spot, thousands of commuters will be affected.

“It will take several months to a year and we will have to be using pontoons to cross, so we need to look at a second bridge in the town,” the mayor posited.

Alves, however, said from his assessment, the bridge does not need urgent repairs and bemoaned the fact that the community was made anxious over an unwarranted situation.

He said the council has been rallying for a new bridge and is saying that this bridge is in need of emergency repairs to push that cause.

“They are looking for ways and means to get some degree of urgency into that matter so I was trying to tell him (Gasper) that he should not excite the public about the existing bridge and he could use the traffic jams that they normally have at peak hours because persons are clamouring for a two-lane bridge to ease the traffic congestion. This bridge isn’t in a state where it will collapse or that sort,” Alves said.

Meanwhile, daily commuters of the bridge have expressed fear over the situation and have even questioned the need for closing it every Thursday to facilitate repairs, while the bottom is in a terrible state.

“Every Thursday they close the bridge so what is the men doing. I believe is time we stop this with this bridge, we urgently need a new bridge; this one is there for very long and the middle is there since 1913 so is high time Linden get a new bridge,” Coretta Brathwaite commented.

In June, regional authorities during a meeting with executives of the Private Sector Commission raised concerns about the construction of the new bridge to facilitate the traffic that will be attracted by the Linden to Lethem road.

Former Chairman of the Linden Enterprise Network, Klensil Grenville, expressed fear that if this is not done, the road will be built and the town will be in the same economic situation as it is in now since no steps are being taken in preparation for the road.

“What will happen with that Brazil Road is just what is happening right now, billions of dollars that is passing through this town and we are not in the position to benefit from anything whatsoever. It will just happen in larger proportions or quantity and it will happen again. We have to move from ideas to initiation and sound planning,” he said.