The government will allocate a sum of 15 million dollars to repair the rural road destroyed by the intense rains and floods suffered in different areas of Uruguay during the last few weeks.
After the declaration of the national road emergencyafter the request of Congress of Mayors to the Office of Planning and Budget (OPP) due to the deteriorated state of rural roads after the extreme weather events that the country has experienced with the beginning of autumn, the Executive power determined an amount of 15 million extra dollars to repair damaged rural roads.
The objective behind the government’s decision was, precisely, to enable extraordinary resources from the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) to guarantee the entry and exit of trucks loaded with grain once the season begins soy harvest and, thus, guarantee one of the most important crops for the country’s trade balance.
“What we are looking for with this, about 15 million extra dollars, is to be able to repair the roads and so that the soybean harvest can be delivered in a timely manner,” explained the undersecretary of Transportation and Public Works (MTOP), Juan José Olaizola to El País, and added that “work is already being done in some departments of the coast”.
The urgency is greater if we take into account the important floods that suffers the south of Brazil and that, at the local level, can impact a significant flood of the Uruguay River which, eventually, generates a worsening of the road situation that is already in a delicate state at a general level throughout the country.
Likewise, Olaizola highlighted that there was “a very significant increase in production in recent decades,” so the next government “must think about assuming a different attitude towards rural roads, without transferring all responsibility to the departmental municipalities.” “This must be negotiated at the time, but it is an idea that we have in the Ministry of Transportation,” added the nationalist leader.
Crossings on rural roads between authorities and transporters
In Paysandu, The situation of the rural roads and the responsibility for it led to a disagreement between the mayor Nicolas Olivera and the Inter-Union of Professional Land Cargo Transport of Uruguay (ITPC).
In this regard, the communal chief had stated that the transporters are “the only ones responsible for the state of the rural roads of the department”; particularly targeting trucks leaving and entering the manufacturing plant UPM 2. “The lords of UPM They will think that we are a banana country and they can do whatever they want. In the midst of a road emergency, zero respect for the rules, for the authorities, for the neighbors. Zero sensitivity. “Patience has run out with these daring people,” Olivera wrote on social networks.
These comments earned him a response from the ITPC, which issued a statement in which it indicated that the Sanducero mayor seeks to establish a system of fines “and new additional costs to the activity,” in relation to what Olivera told the local media El Telégrafo regarding what he would send to the Departmental Board a regulatory change by which “severe” fines are imposed on those who affect the roadway.
“Of course, decreeing that circulation is only enabled after three days after the last rain, would be the difference between the soybeans rotting in the trucks or not,” the transporters stated in the statement.
Source: Ambito
