While speaking on a radio show recently, Parsons advised that the territory should employ at least two good road engineers and have them work along with the Public Works Department to see a transformation of the state of the roads. 

“If we don’t have them here, find two of them, pay them a decent salary and tell them ‘let me tell you something, within a six month time, I want to see progress on our road’,” Parsons expressed.

The former legislator also suggested that the government should hire more people to do ‘serious maintenance of the roads’. 

“Let them hire who they need to hire – labourers, qualified workmen, whatever – and declare war on our roads and get them fixed. This is a disgrace for a territory that is touting tourism, touting how much money we have,” she added. 

Tourists parting bush

Parsons said she was told this is going to be a busy tourist season that will also be very profitable for the industry and those who stand to benefit from tourism. 

“For them (tourists) to come and be driving on the kind of roads that I am driving on, and to have the grass… on the scenic Ridge Road—The roads in the country, the scenes are so beautiful and to have to be parting bush for them to see, it sends a very bad signal to our people,” Parsons related.

In the meantime, Public Works Minister Kye Rymer recently disclosed that the government has pumped more than $5 million into patching the territory’s roads over the past three years. 

Minister Rymer also noted that an upcoming road repair project which runs from Paraquita Bay to Trellis Bay is expected to cost about $10 million.