Morgan vows SPARK 2 will deliver remaining roads promised under island-wide programme

Minister with responsibility for works Robert Morgan has reaffirmed that the Government intends to honour its pledge to rehabilitate 10 roads in every constituency under the Shared Prosperity through Accelerated Improvement to our Road Network (SPARK) initiative, signalling that a second phase will be launched once the first wraps up.

“As SPARK 1 ends… around the first quarter of the next financial year, we have to do SPARK 2 because we promised 10 roads per constituency,” Morgan told the Jamaica Observer on Thursday.

“We made a commitment for 10 roads, the prime minister is very strong on it and we said in our manifesto that we are going to have SPARK 2 which is going to fix what we did not fix under SPARK 1,” the minister added.

Morgan was reacting to disclosures from Wednesday’s session of Parliament’s Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC), where lawmakers heard that the funds set aside for SPARK would fall short of covering the full 10-road target per constituency that had been announced at the outset.

National Works Agency (NWA) chief executive officer EG Hunter told the committee, “At the time of the community consultations when the 10 roads were identified, nobody knew at that point in time what the cost for any of the roads [would be]. So notwithstanding the fact that 10 roads were identified the number of roads that can be undertaken based on the budget depends on the cost of each road.”

Hunter continued, “To the extent that the cost of the first or second road chosen are substantial in terms of their cost, it’s the extent to which limited funds remain from the budget to undertake the other roads,” noting that more than 250 of the 630 roads originally earmarked are unlikely to be addressed.

In his sit-down with the Observer, however, Morgan said adjustments to the $45-billion undertaking — billed as the largest roadwork push ever attempted in Jamaica — mean additional funding will have to flow through SPARK 2.

The minister explained that unforeseen issues have made it necessary to expand the budget, and stressed that the Government has never claimed a single programme, no matter how sweeping, could repair every road in the country in one go.

“There are more roads that need new water pipes than we thought initially and there were also some roads that needed significantly more money after the initial costing was done,” Morgan said.

He cited Everest Drive in Kingston Eastern, the site where the programme was first launched, observing that, “You went in there planning to spend $70 million and ended up spending $100 million because you now have to build more retaining walls, you have to build more drainage”.

Morgan went on, “The Government has made a decision to build the roads properly …we are not taking a short cut, we’re focused on quality over quantity.”

“The quantity is going to come under SPARK 2 to finish what we have and add some more. But we have made a policy decision that these roads must last 10 to 15 years,” he said.

“If you don’t do them properly they are not going to last 10 to five years, so the tradition of just asphalting the road and then two years later you see the road start swelling up and water pipes bursting and National Water Commission (NWC) has to be digging up the road [will be a thing of the past],” Morgan added.

He told the Observer that the Dr Andrew Holness-led Administration has picked up valuable lessons since the initiative began.

“We have learnt lessons from Richings Avenue, we have learnt lessons from Liguanea Avenue,” Morgan said, recalling that in one case a stretch of road that had been resurfaced under SPARK was excavated again by the NWC just four months afterwards.

“As we move the programme forward we keep learning lessons and we keep having to change because Jamaica has never built 400 roads under any programme. So this is new, it is new for the NWA, it is new for China Harbour Engineering Company who is the main contractor, it is new for the subcontractors, it is new for the NWC,” he said.

The minister was careful to caution that SPARK 2 may not necessarily kick off in the opening quarter of next year. “We have started planning for SPARK 2. I have given instructions to the NWA to start preparing for SPARK 2 and this is a high policy decision. This is a decision that was made in our manifesto for the last general election that we’re going to do part two,” he said.

Under the present phase of the programme, Morgan indicated that most constituencies will receive between five and eight roads. His own Clarendon North Central seat is set to see only five roads completed under SPARK 1, while St James North Western, represented by Dr Horace Chang, will get the full 10 because of its smaller size. Lawmakers in Portmore are also expected to have most of their listed roads finished.