At the beginning of this month, Deputy Prime Minister Hon. Mark Brown led a team up to the Takuvaine and Tupapa sites to check on the progress of construction. Construction started on these sites in September and October 2018 respectively.
The minister was very impressed by the progress made at Takuvaine. At the last site visit just before Christmas the concrete was being poured for the settlement tank: “Now we can see the tank is almost completed and work is now commenced on filtration” said the DPM.
Construction has started on 9 of the 10 sites, with the completion date currently set for November 2019.
Out of the 91 McConnell Dowell staff working on this project, 73 are of Cook Island nationality, with 12 coming home to Rarotonga to work. “There are a lot of people benefitting from this, and a lot of local businesses are also being sub-contracted to do services and work like concreting and so forth so it’s a project where benefits are spilling out into the community and where its directly employing a number of Cook Islanders,” says Brown.
We are working towards having landowner tours for the remaining sites at appropriate times throughout the year, more information will be provided closer to the time.