$20 Billion Allocated to Constituencies for Road Improvement

A sum of $20 billion has been allocated to constituencies to rehabilitate community roads under the Shared Prosperity through Accelerated Improvement to Our Road Network (SPARK) Programme.

Prime Minister, the Most. Hon. Andrew Holness, in making the disclosure in Gordon House on Tuesday (January 23), said $10 billion of the total will be divided equally among the 63 constituencies, which will see each constituency receiving approximately $150 million.

He explained that the remaining $10 billion will be allocated to constituencies “based on the mileage of roads in each constituency, relative to the total number of roads or total mileage of roads we are repairing. So now that [addresses] the equity issue because some constituencies have more mileage than others”.

The $40-million SPARK Programme is designed to revitalise secondary, parochial, and community roads across the island within the next three years.

The primary goal of the programme is to address the persistent deterioration of the country’s road network, enhancing mobility, safety and accessibility, while promoting economic development, and improving the overall well-being and road experience for local communities and businesses.

Mr. Holness said the SPARK Programme involves a fair, transparent, and accountable process for identifying and selecting the road projects to be implemented, with citizens playing a significant role.

As such, he said that the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) will be initiating the formal consultative process for the programme.

“Members of Parliament (MPs) through the CDF, will be organising community consultations by parish council division, with the active involvement of the relevant government agencies to include Social Development Commission (SDC), Municipal Corporations, National Works Agency (NWA), National Water Commission, and Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) as well as churches, schools and businesses,” Mr. Holness told the House.

“These consultations aim to collect recommendations on the roads to be repaired and their priority order. I anticipate that this consultative process will conclude by the end of March 2024, presenting a prioritised listing of potential road projects organised by constituency,” he added.

Mr. Holness said this will facilitate the streamlining of the project implementation process from project conception to execution.

“It is important that this be done because when MPs delay in responding and sending in their projects, it creates rippled delays throughout the process. So, by the end of March, all recommendations which would have gone through a process of consultation should be in to the agency tasked with the execution, that agency being the NWA,” he said.

He noted, further, that this will ensure that the other elements of the execution and management of the programme can be done in a timely fashion.

Mr. Holness said directives have been given to the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development and the NWA to update their register of roads, “so that we can get an accurate total of the mileage of roads that we have”.

“Although we do maintain a standing register of roads, which we are required to do by the various laws that require us to have roads assigned to various authorities, they may not always be accurate and up-to-date. New roads have been built, roads have been decommissioned, so that is going to be updated now and we will use that to help determine the allocation per constituency, by the miles of roads in each [area]. So, that I believe, adds the fairness and equity to the distribution,” the Prime Minister said.

He noted that he is confident that the programme will bring about positive and transformative changes to the road networks, contributing significantly to the overall prosperity of communities.

“I want to thank the members in advance for their prompt and diligent conduct of the consultations, which must be completed with recommendations to the NWA by the end of March 2024,” Mr. Holness said.