the entire main road.

"There's nothing wrong with it. It's in perfectly good shape,'' one resident told The Royal Gazette anonymously, adding there were roads in the town of St.

George's that "had not been paved since 1946.'' A site visit to St. David's Road showed this was indeed the case. The surface was smooth and there was not a pot hole to be seen as a Works crew forged ahead with laying of a new coat of asphalt.

But when the Works and Engineering Ministry was contacted, principal highways engineer Mr. Marshall Minors said one needed to look deeper than the surface.

"We carry out annual inspection surveys and while a lot of the roads may look fine, in actual fact they are broken down,'' he said. "What we try to do is resurface them before it becomes too expensive a project.'' Mr. Minors noted locals had said the same thing back when South Shore Road was paved and there had also appeared to be nothing wrong with it.

"But we found we saved money in the long run,'' he said. "It costs half the money to resurface as opposed to reconstruction and resurfacing.'' He added his department was coming to the end of a $1.7 million sum for resurfacing and repairing roads around the Island in the current financial year. North Shore Road, Warwick roads and Harbour Road had been done, he said.

The roads the St. David's Islander referred to were mainly a dozen back alleys in St. George's as well as Queen Street. The Corporation of St. George's has long battled to find the money to upgrade them.

AS GOOD AS NEW -- The right side of St. David's Road is as good as new but it appeared that way even before a Works crew started resurfacing it this month.