North Coast Highway hit by another delay
WESTERN BUREAU — Segment one of the North Coast Highway, from Bogue in St James to Negril in Westmoreland, which has been a source of embarrassment to the government in the over four years it has been under construction, is faced with yet another delay.
This latest delay — the fifth since work began in 1997 — has been caused by the failure of the St James asphaltic concrete plant to supply the project with the material over the past seven days, the National Works Agency said in a statement yesterday.
This means that the April 30 completion date, which was announced recently by transport and works minister Robert Pickersgill, will not be met.
According to the NWA’s communication manager, Vando Palmer, the asphaltic concrete plant in St James has been out of operation for over a week, despite efforts to correct the fault.”
But it is not only the inability of the plant to supply the project with the needed material that is causing this latest delay, as the release points out.
Among the other contributing factors for the delay, the NWA said, was a demonstration staged by residents of Davis Cove demanding employment on the project two weeks ago.
“Their action forced a work stoppage for approximately four days, as the contractor pulled his services to ensure the safety of the workers,” said the NWA.
Pipe-laying work by the National Water Commission in Lucea and Hopewell was also blamed as another contributing factor to the delay of the project. At the same time, the NWA said it feared sections of road in Lucea would not be paved until the pipe-laying works were completed.
Palmer, in an interview with the Observer yesterday, could not say precisely when the paving work on the highway would resume. But said he had been told the computer system at the asphalt plant was back up and that it was “highly likely” that it would resume supply of the asphaltic concrete to the project today.
Palmer was, however, unable to give a new completion date for the project, only to say it would be ready by year-end.
The highway, which began in 1997, should have been completed at a cost of US$48 million two years later, but it missed its September 1999 deadline. An August 2000 deadline was then set but it could not be met either after its Korean contractors ran into money troubles and the completion date was pushed back to December 31, 2001.
But it soon became clear that date would not be met either and Prime Minister PJ Patterson himself stepped in and told the NWA to ensure the delay-plagued project’s completion no later than March this year.
But despite the PM’s input, with the project faced with a series of work stoppages due to protesting workers, money worries and the plant malfunctioning, that date could not be met either.