During the Oct. 24 broadcast of his weekly “Browne and Browne” radio program, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne committed to escalating widespread public frustrations over ongoing roadwork mismanagement directly to the Minister of Public Works, after a concerned citizen caller laid out two core, long-running issues plaguing local motorists. The resident told Browne that current road closure alert systems are functionally useless for most drivers, who often only find out a route is fully blocked after they have already arrived at active construction zones, with no advance warning to plan alternate journeys. The caller also highlighted a second, equally hazardous pain point: work crews were carving out large sections of paved roadway and leaving those stretches broken and unrepaired for weeks on end, in some cases turning previously passable routes into far more dangerous, impassable obstacles than they were before maintenance work launched. Browne openly validated the caller’s grievances, acknowledging that while the Public Works department does periodically distribute formal press releases to announce planned works, those generic notices are not granular or widely distributed enough to alert ordinary commuters to the specific, day-to-day disruptions they face on local roads. He noted that the root of many of the extended repair delays lies in uncoordinated silos between separate Public Works teams: one dedicated crew cuts out damaged road sections to prepare for patching, while a completely separate unit handles installation of new kerbs and drainage infrastructure, with no aligned timeline to sync their tasks. This disjointed workflow often means resurfacing work is put on indefinite hold while drainage upgrades are finished, leaving gouged road sections exposed for extended periods. Browne proposed a targeted operational adjustment to resolve the backlog: restructuring the work sequence to have the kerb and drainage team complete their full scope of work first, before any road sections are cut open for patching and resurfacing. While he confirmed he would raise both the communication failures and workflow coordination issues directly with the responsible cabinet minister, Browne did not unveil any formal new public notification system for road closures, nor share a concrete timeline for rolling out the proposed operational reforms.
Public Works urged to improve road closure notices in Antigua and Barbuda
