Secretary confident that the LRT will be completed in 2019

Raimundo do Rosário

Secretary for Transport and Public Works, Raimundo do Rosário, said yesterday that the Light Railway Transit (LRT) will be completed in 2019 in response to journalists’ questions on the sidelines of the Carmo Post Office opening.
Earlier this week, the government outsourced the construction of a LRT depot to the China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) through a contract valued at MOP1.07 billion.
According to the secretary, the construction of the depot has already started.
In order to dissolve the contract with the former contractors, MOP85 million was paid out to them.
Rosario noted that this payment cannot be seen as a compensation. It was made according to what was written in the contract. “Every project features several points. If the contractor wants to leave, he should be paid according to the materials that are left behind or in case some payments were supposed to have been made earlier,” explained Raimundo.
The secretary also pledged that “land works of 9.3 kilometers and 11 stops in Taipa will be completed by the end of this year.”
According to Rosário, for the next step the department will focus on the elements of the LRT associated with the Macau Peninsula and Coloane, including a stop at Barra and at some facilities in Coloane.
The secretary also revealed that, this time, the government invited the CSCEC to construct the LRT depot instead of launching public tenders for the project.
Ho Cheong Kei, interim coordinator of the Transportation Infrastructure Office, explained that the transport authority invited the Chinese state company due to the tight schedule.
“The depot is the core of the LRT. We want to start its construction as soon as possible,” said Ho.
The depot structure is one of five projects comprising the LRT Taipa section. It features a 130,000 square meter area which will serve as an operation control center, a factory and a maintenance building, in addition to another area for trains to be parked and cleaned, which includes a 600-meter train-testing track. JZ