Workers from the Ministry of Works and Transport yesterday removed the remnants of the Caroni Bailey Bridge which collapsed earlier this year during a dismantling exercise, claiming the life of one man and injuring four others.

The site had been placed under 24-hour surveillance following the August 2 accident, mainly to safe-guard against scrap metal thieves, workers said yesterday.

One of the workmen, who spoke to the Sunday Express on the condition of anonymity yesterday, said most of the bridge had already been removed and they were in the final clean-up phase. ’We are removing everything. We should be finished in a couple days’ time, to a week,’ he said.

He said the remaining portions of the decommissioned bridge, which had spanned the Caroni River, will be placed in storage at Woodford Lodge.

Three days after the tragic incident in which Ramdath Bissoo, 44, was killed, Prime Minister Patrick Manning named a Forensic Investigations Committee, chaired by engineer Keith Sirju, to investigate the bridge’s fatal collapse.

The Joint Consultative Council for the Construction Industry (JCC), in a statement last week, claimed the Investigations Committee report into the collapse of the bridge had been submitted more than two months ago to the Prime Minister, but was being kept secret.

The JCC called on Manning to make the report available to the public immediately ’to ensure public confidence in the government is not damaged by claims of a cover-up when a tragedy such as this has caused death and injury to citizens’.