Repairs to the damaged component of Retractor Span 9 on the Demerara Harbour Bridge have been completed.
Minister within the Public Infrastructure Ministry Deodat Indar told INews that only the component that was broken is fixed and not the entire retractor span.
“It had a breakage of one of the eyes on Span 9 and that is what was fixed. They haven’t fixed the whole Span 9,” Indar explained.
The bridge was closed from 11:30h to 13:00h today to facilitate the repair works.
This resulted in an unavoidable traffic build-up around that time. But vehicles have since been flowing cross the bridge.
In the meantime, restrictions are still in place for cargo truck traversing the bridge. Only trucks carrying loads of up to 18 tonnes will be allowed to traverse the bridge but only one truck will be allowed at a time from either side to cross.
“We had to make a decision to interrupt the traffic for trucks bearing load. We have satisfied ourselves that if we release one truck at a time on the bridge, as against several trucks both going and coming at the same time, we’ll be able to alleviate some of the problems that we currently face,” Public Works Minister, Juan Edghill, said during a press briefing on Thursday after conducting a site inspection on the troubled Retractor Span.
Meanwhile, the Minister had established a technical team to look into the issues and they were given 72 hours to come up with solutions.
Due to the issues, retractions for marine traffic have been halted.
