Establish road memory banks
Published:Tuesday | October 25, 2022 | 12:06 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
Public infrastructure projects, especially road repairs and construction, in Jamaica are still associated with high levels of overruns, corruption and mismanagement of funds. The majority of contractors who sign with the NWA or parish municipalities seem not to give warranty for their work.
Since the shutdown of the Public Works Department (PWD) in the 1980s, billions of taxpayers’ dollars have been lost due to poor accountability and corrupt practices on roadworks. Whenever roads are repaired, one can bet their bottom dollar that the NWC then comes and digs up the surface, as no coordination is done between the utility companies, and what is left is then destroyed by the next sheets of rain.
We urgently need to establish a road construction memory bank. My uncle, who died seven years ago, was among those who built roads while working with the PWD. At the time of his death, some of the roads that he built were still in better condition, after 30 years, than the expensive nonsense under the supervision of the NWA.
The rector of St Andrew Parish Church, while serving as a parish priest at Highgate, St Mary, stopped a road construction near the Anglican Church when he saw what was being done, and with threats of ‘Holy Water’, got the contractor to lay down proper foundation of stones before the application of the ‘gravel and gravy’.
There are Jamaicans who can recall breaking stones that were sold to the PWD to be used as the first layer of foundation in the construction process. They will tell stories of how those involved in road repairs would first visit the community and ascertain where the drainage is located, and how the water runoffs occur whenever it rains. Nowadays, the ‘eat-a-food’ contractors have no idea about flood mitigation or do follow-up work.
In February, the minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, Everald Warmington, disclosed that a total of $5 billion has been budgeted for roadworks during the 2022-23 fiscal year (JIS, February 23, 2022). How many of those roads lasted through the tail-end of Hurricane Ian? Are we planning to give the same contractors more money to deliver the same shoddy work?
Let us not allow those with the memory of how to build a lasting road in Jamaica go unnoticed. Like Olive Lewin, who recorded anthologies of old Jamaica folk songs, let us record the information on how roads were constructed with a minimum life of 30 years.
DUDLEY MCLEAN II
Mandeville, Manchester