60 Per Cent of Roads Cleared

Corporate Communications Director at the National Works Agency (NWA), Stephen Shaw, says up to 40 per cent of roads remain impassable up to Thursday evening.

Mr. Shaw, who was speaking at a media briefing at the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), today (October 25), said the NWA had responded to 150 reports of blocked corridors on main and parochial roads and had cleared up to 60 per cent.

He informed that a team is currently working in the Bog Walk Gorge in St. Catherine, which is a major corridor that connects the south to the north, to have it reopened  for tomorrow.  He noted that the Gorge road is heavily silted with sand. “We have to clean it up properly, before we can allow vehicular access there,” he said. Mr. Shaw said, too, that motorists travelling along the Junction main road to St. Mary, should proceed with extreme caution, noting that there are a number of landslides and boulders impacting the corridor, in addition to a downed power line.

Other areas that are blocked include the Morant Bay to Golden Grove main road, which is impacted by water and fallen trees, and the Cedar Valley road, all in St. Thomas.

He pointed also to blockages in the hills of St. Andrew, where some areas have been cut off, in particular the Drummond area.

Explaining that the team has been dispersed across the parishes, Mr. Shaw stated that:  “We are doing all that we can to ensure that persons can once again move as quickly as possible, but we are experiencing challenges as far as the weather is concerned as it is still raining in some of these areas.”

He stated that raw material, such as river shingles, which the agency uses in its work, is currently unavailable, and the agency is waiting on the river levels to recede  to access the material.