Gov’t Creating Centralised National Road Registry

The Government is working towards the creation of a Centralised National Road Registry, which will be a census of all existing roads in Jamaica.

Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, in his contribution to the 2024/25 Budget Debate in the House of Representatives on Thursday (March 21), said that the Registry will contain information on the geographic location and the responsible entity, which will inform future maintenance activity.

“The Spatial Data Management Division of the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation will be critical in providing geospatial data on local roads to complete this database. This will be supported by on-the-ground site inspections,” he informed.

Mr. Holness said that through the platform, which will be constantly updated, the public will be able to go online and see the status of their community road as well as the entity responsible for maintenance.

There will also be a facility for residents to be able to make geo-tagged reports on damage or hazards to the relevant authorities.

The Prime Minister said that in addition to improving the condition of roads across the island “we must, at the same time, design and implement a proper system of ongoing maintenance, including routine patching, sealing the roads, cleaning and bushing where necessary. We must never allow our infrastructure to degrade to this level again”.

Pointing to the $40-billion two-year Shared Prosperity through Accelerated Improvement to our Road Network (SPARK) Programme, Mr. Holness said for the next decade there must be an elevated allocation towards road rehabilitation and maintenance “if we are to bring our roadways to a reasonable standard of repair”.

“Having now properly audited all our roads we can now prepare a comprehensive maintenance and repair schedule to realistically inform the budgetary allocation necessary to improve our roads in a reasonable time frame,” the Prime Minister said.