A total of $10 billion is to be allocated for Jamaica’s 63 constituencies to carry out road improvement projects in the upcoming fiscal year, Prime Minister Andrew Holness has announced.

This translates to each constituency being given a minimum of $150 million to undertake the works which will be identified through a consultative process.

The allocation forms part of the $40-billion Shared Prosperity through Accelerated Improvement to our Road Network (SPARK) programme announced by Holness and Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke in their budget debate presentations last year.

Holness, who gave an update on the programme in a statement to Parliament on Tuesday, explained that the SPARK programme, which is designed to revitalise secondary, parochial and community roads across the island within the next three years, has been split in two segments to allow for quick and efficient execution of some roads.

“So, $20 billion would go to those main roads and those would come now from a kind of national assessment done by the National Works Agency (NWA), but we have reserved $20 billion that will be at the direction of communities and the MPs (Members of Parliament) and counsellors coming together in this consultative process to deal with roads that are local and community roads that may not require the kind of infrastructure development,” he said.

The prime minister said that of the $20 billion set aside, approximately half of that will be divided equally per constituency.

“So, $10 billion will be divided equally amongst the constituencies. That will result in approximately $150 million per constituency. The remaining $10 billion will be allocated to constituencies based on the mileage of roads in each constituency relative to the total number of roads or total mileage of roads we are repairing,” Holness said.

He said that the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development and the NWA have been tasked with updating their register of roads in order to get an accurate total of the mileage of roads. This information, he said, will assist with the complete allocation for each constituency.

Holness noted, as well, that the Government will retain a certain percentage of the overall sum to deal with special cases “that we probably didn’t think of when we were making the general rule”.

The prime minister said that a crucial element of the SPARK programme involves a fair, transparent and accountable process for identifying and selecting the road projects to be implemented. As such, he noted that the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) has been instructed to facilitate the formal consultative process for this segment of the SPARK programme.

“MPs, through the CDF, will be asked to organise community consultation by parish council division with the active involvement of the relevant government agencies to include the Social Development Commission, municipal corporations, NWA, National Water Commission, the Jamaica Constabulary Force, as well as churches, schools, and businesses,” he said.

Holness said these consultations, which he anticipates will conclude by the end of March 2024, aim to collect recommendations on the roads to be repaired and their priority order. He said that the consultative process should culminate with a prioritised listing of potential road projects organised by constituency. This, he said, is to facilitate the streamlining of the project implementation process from conception to execution.

“It is important that this be done because when MPs delay in responding and sending in their projects, it creates ripple delays throughout the process. This is not to say that is only MPs that delay the process. But if MPs do contribute to delays we want to take that delay out of the process. So, by the end of March, all recommendations which would have gone through a process of consultation should be in to the agency tasked with execution, that agency being the NWA,” he said.

“This will ensure that the other elements of the execution and the management of the programme can be done in a timely fashion. So we can have matching of roads instead of roads going one by one. So, that way, the programme can work more efficiently,” he added.

The prime minister asked for the cooperation of all MPs and the relevant State agencies in having these consultations done in a timely fashion utilising the resources of the CDF.

“Every Member of Parliament should have a CDF officer and a liaison officer assigned to the constituency. Please utilise those resources to assist in organising the consultations, division by division,” he said.

In the meantime, MP for St Andrew South Eastern Julian Robinson questioned the time period given to complete the consultation process, arguing that with a local government election pending and the budget debate coming up, it would be difficult to complete the process before the end of March.

“So, while I appreciate that you want and I want the projects to start and to get going quickly, I’m just saying you may compromise the integrity of those consultations if you push people to get it done by March 31st,” he said.

Holness responded that the aim is to start implementation — roads being asphalted and repaired — in the coming financial year.

“I understand your point, which is the time from now to March may be considered too short, but bear in mind it is almost 60 days, two months. You have the entire February you can use for preparation and the entire March that you can use for consultations. We want to keep a tight timeline on it so that we can go through the other processes so that we can actually start implementation,” he said.

MP for St Andrew South Western Angela Brown Burke also questioned how efficiently the programme will work. She said that even though the programme sounded like a good initiative, “I am a doubting Thomas” as it relates to her constituency with another $40-million road project the Government is undertaking which has not had a smooth implementation.

Holness admitted that the process of implementing the $40-million project has not been seamless as it was plagued by “significant problems” including staffing and resource issues and how timely the projects were submitted.

“The procurement process itself was quite cumbersome… we are trying to make sure that we correct those shortcomings in this project,” he said.