Editorial | Accounting for Hagley Park Road

THE UPGRADING of Hagley Park Road, should, by now, have been long complete. The deadline was 10 months ago, which the National Works Agency (NWA) promised, in July of last year, would be met. So, the assumption was that any construction now taking place would be very minor mopping-up.

It appears, however, that there is still much to do. The NWA, therefore, should feel compelled to give a full account of the design integrity of the project and of how the money for it has been spent. For that matter, it would be useful for the agency, which has responsibility for the Government’s major infrastructure works, to do the same with respect to other big projects around the capital. That, perhaps, should become the norm for all major works undertaken by the NWA. Detailed periodic reporting on them would make sense.

Our concern is heightened by what happened with Hagley Park Park Road this week, after a day of relatively heavy rain. In some sections of the thoroughfare, chunks of its asphaltic concrete collapsed. There was significant flooding, which victimised businesses as well as residents of adjacent communities, who, after more than two years of construction, might have believed they were past such problems.

Upgrade was necessary

For the avoidance of doubt, no one, and certainly not this newspaper, questions the worth of the Hagley Park Road upgrade. It included the widening of 3.5 kilometres of road to four lanes and the construction of a flyover at the Portia Simpson Miller Square. Prior to its rehabilitation and expansion, the road, depending on the section, accommodated between 24,000 and 30,000 vehicles per day. It can now, or is supposed to be able to, handle up to 60 per cent more traffic. There was also to have been a major improvement of the drainage along the road.

The declared cost of this project is US$56.5 million, 85 per cent of which was borrowed from China’s Export-Import Bank. China Harbour Engineering Company is the contractor on the job.

There are several issues, in the aftermath of this week’s event, which the NWA must address about Hagley Park Road – and other projects. It is not unreasonable, for instance, for the public to seek an explanation about why a project scheduled for completion in October 2019 still has substantial amounts of work outstanding in August 2020 – much of it crucial.

When will the work be done?

Indeed, in explaining the flooding, Mr E.G. Hunter, the NWA’s chief executive officer, suggested that it was because new drains are not completed, or connected, thus causing a holding arrangement to still be in place. “That area has been an area under construction,” he said. “It was never completed. The reinstatement that you see there was a temporary reinstatement to allow the contractor to go back there subsequently and complete those works.”

He did not say when the job would be completed – which we suspect affected businesses and residents would like to know – and whether it was the contractor’s fault that there is a time overrun on the project. If it is, taxpayers would wish to be informed if the contract provides for penalties and compensation. Neither is it idle curiosity that taxpayers, who ultimately will foot the bill for the project, would want to know whether this week’s flood was beyond an event the road was designed to tolerate, hence the damage.

To be fair, Mr Hunter emphasised that with respect to the Hagley Park Road and the other big infrastructure projects at various stages of completion in the capital, the contractor would not be paid the full contract sums, “unless and until all the works have been completed to our satisfaction”. It is against this backdrop, he said, that the contractor may sometimes be observed doing remedial work.

We get that. We also get that delays in projects impose costs on communities and societies. In some instances those costs, especially if the delays are because of initial shoddy work, may not be immediately discernible. That is why those who bear the costs, financially and otherwise, wish for transparency and accountability.