Gov’t Building Roads for the Future – Minister Morgan
By: , May 2, 2025
Photo: Dave Reid
2Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation with responsibility for Works, Hon. Robert Morgan, displays a copy of the Shared Prosperity Through Accelerated Improvement to Our Road Network (SPARK) Programme progress report, while addressing the monthly meeting of the St. Catherine Chamber of Commerce and Industry held at Cecil’s Restaurant in Spanish Town, St. Catherine, on Wednesday (April 30).The Full Story
The Government, through the Shared Prosperity Through Accelerated Improvement to Our Road Network (SPARK) Programme, is building roads that are durable, sustainable and reliable.
“What we’re doing at SPARK is we’re building out roads, not just for the present but for the future,” said Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation with responsibility for Works, Hon. Robert Morgan.
He was addressing the monthly meeting of the St. Catherine Chamber of Commerce and Industry held at Cecil’s Restaurant in Spanish Town on Wednesday (April 30).
SPARK is a $45-billion programme that will provide long-term rehabilitation and upgrades to road infrastructure in communities across the country.
Approximately 600 roads across 63 constituencies have been identified for extensive improvements.
The project will also entail the installation of fibre-optic ducts to support future broadband connectivity, which aligns with the Government’s digital transformation strategy.
Minister Morgan assured that the work will be done to international standards, with a focus on the specific needs of each road. The average cost per kilometre of road is about $40 million.
“There are some roads that require realignment. There are some roads that have features in them because of how they came about; there was no design,” he said, citing the case of communities that started as informal settlements.
“They started off with a track and then a couple of years later the Government said, ‘we have a population up there, so we’ll send a grader to pave a road’. We never built a drain so there was no contemplation of where the water would go, there was no contemplation of putting in fibre-optic cables under the earth to give people access to the Internet,” he pointed out.
SPARK is scheduled to be undertaken over two years, with an additional one-year defects liability period, during which the contractor will be responsible for fixing any flaws at no cost to the Government.