THE National Housing Trust (NHT) will be footing the bill for the construction of a 44-metre, double-span bridge across the Salt River Road fording in Clarendon, to ease the problems experienced by the public and residents of the Longville Park housing scheme during heavy rains.

In the Sunday Observer last week, an NHT advertisement invited contractors with a National Contracts Commission (NCC) Grade One rating in bridge construction, to tender to “design and build a double-span bridge and associated infrastructure on the Salt River Road at Longville.”

The NHT said it expects to complete the bridge by January 2004.

At the same time, the NHT, which began to develop service lots and build studios in the Longville scheme in 1997, told the Observer that it has been constructing a diversion road to allow passage through the fording in light rainfall.

The agency said that the bridge was thought to be necessary from the time the scheme was planned, since the Salt River Road — the main access way to the settlement — is a public roadway.

However, a spokesman for the NHT charged that the National Works Agency (NWA) had rejected its plan to contribute 80 per cent of the cost of the bridge on completing phase one.

Phase one consisted of 494 studios and 286 service lots, while 620 studios and 940 serviced lots make up phase two.

Most of the offerings have been sold out, but a number of lots are still currently being sold.

During the heavy rains in May 2002 and again on May 24 this year, residents in the Longville Park housing scheme were cut off when flooding made the fording impassable.

“We were marooned for four days in May last year and on May 24 last month during heavy rainfall; 150 cars were cut off at the fording from 6:00 am Saturday until the Sunday morning,” complained Paulette Rhoden, projects facilitator for the Longville Park Citizens Association.

She said that the residents were happy that the bridge is to be constructed, as the alternative route during heavy rainfall — via Hayes and Dawkins Pen — lengthened the journey to the housing scheme by four miles.