Road Maintenance Project Gets $19.7 Million

A sum of $19.7 million has been allocated in the 2013/14 Estimates of Expenditure to continue work on a programme of support for decentralized road maintenance.

The undertaking, which commenced in April 2011, seeks to implement a programme of institutional capacity building among relevant stakeholders, in relation to road maintenance.

This will be done through the development of maintenance standards, an evaluation system for tracking contractors’ performance, and islandwide dissemination of the programme’s information.

Activities undertaken up to February 2013 include: consultancy engagement to establish the Land Transportation Authority; partial completion of development and training for routine road maintenance micro-enterprise; partial development of a monitoring and evaluation system; and partial completion of the design and implementation of a road emergency attention system. These are among the activities earmarked for completion during 2013/14.

The programme is being jointly funded by the Government of Jamaica and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and is scheduled for completion by March 2014.

By Douglas McIntosh, JIS Reporter