The province’s largest public sector union says it’s ready to get to work on dividing parts of the highway.

Yesterday, Transportation Minister Barry Petten announced the government was moving away from a P3 model that would twin the TCH on a stretch west of Whitbourne and between Bishops Falls and Grand Falls-Windsor.

Trevor King, Secretary-Treasurer of NAPE, says it means that some workers who may have been laid off will be able to work longer during the construction season.

“There’s a number of different classifications that would be involved in the work, whether it’s those that are on the heavy equipment, those that are on the ground,” he stated.

“It also might mean more jobs.”

The shift from the P3 model means some bidders will have to be compensated for preliminary work already carried out, but government argues it will not have to spend more money on that same work.

Transportation critic Jamie Korab says government has to change its way of thinking – which is what the previous government did – by using public-private partnerships.

“As a government we need to think outside the box at times. We can’t just always do the same thing. You know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results,” he told reporters at Confederation Building.

“So (it was) something we looked at….obviously that’s scrapped now and we move forward with the way we’ve always done things, which might not be a bad thing, but it is good to look at different ways of doing things.”