PORUS, Manchester — Politicians and commuters in Manchester and Clarendon are calling for urgent repairs to be done on the Scott’s Pass to Whitney Turn main road (near Porus), which has been in a state of disrepair for months.

The crucial main road links Porus and its environs to points east and west. It is used by scores of delivery trucks, construction units, among other vehicles that transport crucial goods and services between Montego Bay and Kingston.

Member of Parliament (MP) for Clarendon South Western Lothan Cousins, whose constituency embraces the worst section of the road at Scott’s Pass close to the border with Manchester Southern, told the Jamaica Observer on Wednesday that the road needs to be completely rehabilitated.

Last year, taxi operators, in protest over the deplorable condition of the road, blocked a section in the vicinity of Scott’s Pass, which resulted in remedial work being done by the National Works Agency (NWA).

Cousins said the now-affected sections were not addressed in that patching programme.

“What the road needs is to be milled and resurfaced. From the road was built in 1970 as an A1 (road), and I can say it is the busiest road in all of Jamaica because it takes all the traffic from St Elizabeth, Manchester, Westmoreland, St James into Kingston,” said the Opposition Member of Parliament.

“The approach taken by the NWA over the past few years to depend on quarterly patching and partial rehabilitation is unsustainable. The method of construction in some sections of that particular thoroughfare needs to be revisited, particularly from Scott’s Pass to Whitney Turn, that section needs to be concreted because you have erosion taking place overtime and rocks falling,” he added.

However, NWA Communications Manager Stephen Shaw said the agency is awaiting funds to repair the road.

“How soon is a function of how soon the money can be found and we always have plans to fix roads. We are never out of plans, it is just that we don’t always have the money and that is the issue,” he said.

“We are aware of it, but we have to be putting in the funds to deal with that and any other situation that comes up, and I drive on the road all the time,” he added.

Further, Cousins took issue with what he considered to be a neglect of rural Jamaica.

“The men and women of the NWA at the parish level, they don’t have any control, so I would not even blame them. Everything is handled from Kingston and that is what is wrong with the NWA and Jamaica, because Kingston is not Jamaica. Jamaica is bigger than Kingston,” he said.

“Those in Kingston don’t leave their fancy offices and AC [air condition] to come and look at what rural people have to face, so we are doomed,” he added.

Meanwhile, Opposition spokesman on transport and works Mikael Phillips argued for a comprehensive repair of the road.

“… They have not touched from Clarendon Park to Porus. It is the worst that the road has ever been in my lifetime,” said the Manchester North Western MP.

MP for Manchester Southern Robert Chin blamed shabby roadwork for the state of the main road.

“The road was rehabilitated [and] it has deteriorated again. I have a concern with that. They need to hold these contractors now to a standard. It can’t be that we are paying millions of dollars to contractors and they are giving substandard work, that is my concern with that road,” he said.

“To see it deteriorate so quickly, we are just throwing away money,” added Chin, a government MP.

A commuter who asked not to be named said the deplorable state of the road is impeding the smooth flow of traffic.

“It a hold up traffic, because sometime the amount of vehicles weh deh pon road deh bwoy it back up come all the way to Berrydale [a community near Scott’s Pass]. It back up for all a mile. Sometime it take over an hour to go May Pen from Mandeville,” he said.

Cousins had a differing view as to why the road has not been maintained.

“The highway construction is what I believe the Government is banking on to completely abandon their obligations to this road. I shudder to think what will happen when they finish the highway because, imagine, they are not maintaining it now and it is carrying so much traffic,” he said.

“Maybe it is a trick to get more people to buy into the highway so they can get more toll,” he added.

“By keeping this road in a deplorable state and doing the highway construction, they are hoping that when the highway is opened, the traffic will be diverted… All of the MPs who usually complain from Manchester, St Elizabeth, Westmoreland who use the road to get into Parliament will stop complaining,” he claimed.