GOVERNMENT IS about to invest as much as $742 million on upgrading minor roads across the island's 14 geographic divisions, under the five-year Parish Infrastructure Development Programme (PIDP).
According to Raymond Silvera, project manager for the PIDP, expenditure on each parish has been fixed at $40-50 million, as the programme moves into its second phase.
The PIDP is administered by the Ministry of Local Government.
Such news would have been welcomed by the Parish Councils, coming just ahead of Local Government elections in some 270 parish divisions, due this month.
"The Ministry's target is to carry out 15 kilometres of road rehabilitation in each local authority," said Silvera. In the first phase of the project, which was completed towards the end of last year, the project manager said that seven kilometres of roadway had been upgraded in all local authorities. He added that for the project's second phase, to begin "soon", work would be carried out on eight kilometres.
To date, 95 kilometres of parochial roads had been repaired, and another 100 kilometres are to be completed "towards the end of this year or early next year".
The rehabilitation of roads is a major objective of the PIDP, whose mandate is involves maintaining parish infrastructure in a sustainable manner. Another objective is to improve the capacity of local authorities to deliver basic services.
The PIDP, which began three years ago, is funded jointly by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) whose contribution amounts to US$35 million, and the Government of Jamaica whose share is US$15 million.
With the recent signing of the contract for road repairs in St. Catherine, Mr. Silvera noted that half of the contracts for all the parishes had already been negotiated. He said that the repairs should be completed within a four-month period from contract award.
He said the factors taken into account by the local authorities included the importance of a specific roadway, the number of vehicles that utilised the road, and the service it provided, whether for agricultural or residential purposes.
Mr. Silvera that said efforts were made "to ensure that the roads are constructed to some very strict standards" a statement which comes against the background of criticisms on the quality of work that has occasioned recent road construction projects.
"We ensure that the sub-surface is of good quality and meets minimum standards. We go to the extent of testing the marl from the pits before we agree that the contractor can use that type of marl," he said.
As part of its quality control thrust, the PIDP has adopted a maintenance system used by the National Works Agency (NWA) for main roads which involves frequent cleaning of drains and roads inspected and patched in a timely manner.
"As far as the roads repaired are concerned, we consider this a success. We have had two major flood rains and although damage was recorded in various parishes, we have not suffered damage to any of the roads we have made in Portland, Clarendon, Trelawny and St. Ann," Silvera said in reference to the first phase of the PIDP.
The programme comes to an end in 2005.
