00:00With the Diwali Naga opening tonight and running until October 30th and the
00:05Suarez Brothers Circus now at its new location next to the Fab India Expo
00:09until October 27th, commuters are bracing for heightened traffic on the
00:15Uriah Butler Highway. Mayor of Chagonas, Faik Mohammed, has convened an emergency
00:20stakeholder meeting to be held on Wednesday in an effort to mitigate the
00:24anticipated traffic woes in the borough. We have Christmas season and Diwali season in Chagonas.
00:29Diwali season is a big season because we have the Diwali Naga. But what is
00:33happening in this particular instance, the Circus came to town. We, at the
00:40corporation, we got no prior knowledge of this Circus being established prior
00:46to this and now this will cause, this will compound the traffic situation
00:53even more. So what we're going to try to do tomorrow in the meeting is put a
00:57traffic plan that will ease the commute for those who visit Chagonas during this period.
01:02Meantime, Minister of Works, Ruan Sinanon, is refuting claims on social
01:06media that there are or were plans to shut down part of the highway. In fact,
01:12the minister came bearing good news which should help to alleviate traffic
01:16congestion. There was some fake news out yesterday where someone posted a
01:23drawing of the Ministry of Works closing the highway. Which is, I mean, is nonsense.
01:29The Ministry of Works have no intentions of closing off any area on the highway. We do have
01:33construction going on between Chagonas and Cheese Village. That work goes on
01:39from 9 in the morning until 2 o'clock. What we have decided to do is to suspend
01:46the night work because what we do is that we work from 9 in the morning to 2
01:50and then we start back at 9 in the night to 4 the next morning. Because of
01:57the busyness of the Nagar from now to Diwali and I understand some other
02:03activities in Chagonas, we have decided to suspend the night work. So once it's 2
02:09o'clock we come off the road and you have the two lanes of traffic free flow
02:14in either direction. The minister says the night works will resume after Diwali
02:18and is also giving the assurance that the Ura Botla Highway Extension works
02:23will be completed by year's end. That area always had two lanes but and with the
02:30construction we were still able to maintain two lanes because what we did
02:34is that we just started to utilize part of the shoulder. So you still have the
02:38same two lanes that we had previous to that. When it's completed then the
02:44highway will have three lanes all the way from Chagonas to Kuva.
02:49Runasa Katting, TV6 News.
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