FRA removes huge amounts of debris from Irish crossings

The Fiji Roads Authority says there is still a huge amount of driftwood lying in waterways which piles up on low level crossing and Irish crossings during peak floods.

CEO Jonathan Moore says while they are trying to remove this with repeated attendance to clear piled up debris, there is still a likelihood that the next heavy rain will wash more debris down against crossings and may result in flooding with damages to the crossing.

He says this is an inevitable reality during rainy season, and has been this way from the beginning.

Moore adds while the FRA aspires to re-engineer all crossings to a less flood prone structure such as a bridge, the huge number of Irish crossings and the available budget to the FRA makes this impossible in the short to medium term.

He says current budgets and workloads are stretched just to treat the existing aged, overloaded and deteriorated bridges. 

The FRA says that the priority remains on ensuring these bridges servicing tens-of-thousands of people daily are attended to first and thereafter they can progressively address rural low volume communities as budget and priority allows.