Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner Writer

Left: Desmond McKenzie, Mayor of Kingston. Right: Norman Grant - File photos

The Senate last week passed a resolution urging the Government to examine how best to resuscitate the country's rural infrastructure and adequately maintain it in perpetuity.

Special emphasis is given in the resolution to the state of rural roads which in turn affect the fate and fortunes of small farmers and rural economies in general.

It was on the initiative of Opposition member, Norman Grant, that the Senate gave consideration to the issue of rural development. One month ago, Senator Grant, who is also president of the Jamaica Agricultural Society, had moved the resolution, asking for several things to be done. Among other things, he wanted a single national road maintenance body to be established. He called for the floating of a 30-year bond to finance the work of the agency and for the Government to present a timetable for the upgrading of the road network.

In the end, however, the Government members prevailed upon him to drop some specific elements in the resolution, leaving it up to the administration to determine some issues, after the requisite consultations.

Senator Don Wehby, minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Finance, suggested, for example, that by not specifying the method of raising the required funds, the Government would be able to pursue this either through multi-lateral sources or by the floating of a Diaspora bond, targeting the Jamaican overseas community.

Earlier, Senator Grant, in moving the resolution, spoke with great feeling about the decline plight of deep rural communities.

Tracks for words

In one of his more colourful expressions, he told his colleagues that some of the roads were so bad that they could only be traversed using donkeys, but that sometimes "even the donkeys complain about it!"

He, therefore, called for a "rebalancing" of Government priorities in favour of more rural communities when it came to road maintenance.

Senator Desmond McKenzie rejected any suggestion that the present Government was neglecting the needs of rural communities.

One billion dollars (of the approximately $3.5 needed) had already been allocated to repair roads damaged by Hurricane Dean, he reported, with $200 million going to rural roads.

Furthermore, he said, a syste-matic programme of repairs to hurricane damaged rural roads had recently been established through the Ministry of Agriculture and funding secured for this purpose.

Approximately $95 million had been secured to repair cane roads and roads in banana growing areas of the island, he revealed.

Senator McKenzie, who is also the Mayor of Kingston, rejected any notion that the parish councils should give up any control they have over some roads, saying this was not the solution to the problem. The solution, he argued, was simply to provide the councils with more funds to do the job adequately, in collabora-tion with the National Works Agency.