by: Rishard Khan

Af­ter mul­ti­ple de­lays that stalled progress on the Ch­agua­nas Traf­fic Al­le­vi­a­tion Project, com­muters in the bor­ough may fi­nal­ly get some re­lief.

This af­ter the Min­istry of Works And Trans­port of­fi­cial­ly opened the last leg of the first phase on Fri­day.

The leg opened on Fri­day was Phase 1B, the Soogrim Trace Round­about with four con­nec­tor roads.

This new road sys­tem gives mo­torists an ad­di­tion­al en­trance and ex­it in­to the area, re­duc­ing the bot­tle­neck of traf­fic. It al­so adds a new road net­work, giv­ing mo­torists more op­tions to get around.

One reg­u­lar com­muter, Resh­ma Hanslal told Guardian Me­dia she was grate­ful for the new road­way.

“The traf­fic sit­u­a­tion down by Price Plaza ridicu­lous around that round­about. You have to go there to go back out on to the high­way so I guess it would ease up the traf­fic a whole lot, hope­ful­ly, so com­mut­ing would be eas­i­er to and from home to work on the peak hours. I ap­pre­ci­ate it as a dri­ver on the road.”

Alex Fran­cois, a near­by res­i­dent al­so said he ap­pre­ci­ates the project and is sat­is­fied with it.

Pro­gramme Di­rec­tor at PURE, Hay­den Phillip said: “Traf­fic con­ges­tion ex­pe­ri­enced by mo­torists along the Narsa­loo Ra­maya Marg Road will be re­duced. In ad­di­tion, the ex­it from the Uri­ah But­tler High­way (UBH) at the in­ter­sec­tion of the Narsa­loo Ra­maya Marg Road and Soogrim Trace West will be de­com­mis­sioned lead­ing to an im­prove­ment to the lev­el of traf­fic ex­pe­ri­enced at a dan­ger­ous in­ter­sec­tion. It had a lot of ac­ci­dents tak­ing place there.”

The first phase of the project in­cludes the round­about built at the main en­trance to Price Plaza, the round­about built near the ANSA McAL com­pound, and the con­struc­tion of Soogrim Trace West next to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture.

The en­tire project con­tains five phas­es. Phase two, a round­about and par­al­lel road near the En­deav­our In­ter­change, be­gins in the next fi­nan­cial year.

Phase three will be an in­ter­change at Munroe Road, to be built in fis­cal 2021. Phase 4 in­volves an over­pass be­ing built at Brent­wood. Phase 5 will see an­oth­er over­pass con­struct­ed at Soogrim Trace.

by: Shastri Boodan

Cen­tral Elite’s pre­sen­ta­tion of Bring the Rhythm has tak­en the large Band of the Year ti­tle in this year’s Ch­agua­nas Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

The band’s in­di­vid­u­als Mar­lon Fran­cois (Mas is We Thing), Aris­sa Gar­cia (We Need Love) and Daen Fran­cois (Bring Down the Pow­er) al­so swept the King, Queen and Fe­male In­di­vid­ual ti­tles.

Sec­ond place in the large band cat­e­go­ry went to Chase Vil­lage Car­ni­val’s Wings. Chase Vil­lage’s Sel­wyn Fran­cis, with his por­tray­al of The Ea­gle Soars, al­so won the Male In­di­vid­ual ti­tle.

The small band cat­e­go­ry was won by Cre­ative Ex­pres­sions for their Ma­ma Dis is Mas while Mad­ness Crew’s Deep Blue Sea placed sec­ond.

Car­ni­val com­mit­tee chair­man Or­lan­do Nages­sar said he was hap­py to see a large turnout of band and spec­ta­tors this year. He said he was es­pe­cial­ly pleased to see more youth in­volve­ment in tra­di­tion­al mas, adding J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions had grown ex­po­nen­tial­ly in Ch­agua­nas with more than 25,000 spec­ta­tors at­tend­ing the event.

Nages­sar said J’Ou­vert was on the rise part­ly due to the greater fes­tive en­vi­ron­ment that sur­rounds this part of Car­ni­val and the low cost of play­ing in a J’Ou­vert band.

ASP Richard Smith said there were a few in­ci­dents of fights and a few ar­rests of peo­ple with weapons such as knives. Smith said apart from this there were no ma­jor in­ci­dents for cel­e­bra­tions in Cen­tral.