PM urges patience for infrastructure repairs

Prime Minister Bruce Golding is urging Jamaicans to be patient even as they push for repairs to the infrastructure in their communities.

“I understand the anguish that many people out there feel and express because there are critical things that need to be done that they don’t see being done,” Golding said yesterday during a signing ceremony for a new multimillion-dollar sewage treatment plant in Kingston.

“Their roads that need to be fixed, the water supplies that need to be provided, the sewage systems that need to be built or repaired. I offer it not as an excuse but I ask for some understanding that we have a huge backlog,” Golding added.

The prime minister declared that he was not blaming the People’s National Party administration which governed the country for 18 years.

“They had their challenges as well but we have a huge deficit in our infrastructure in Jamaica. Hundreds and hundreds of miles of road that are gone beyond the point where repair is necessary. They need to be ripped up and rebuilt,” said Golding.

But he noted that it would cost billions of dollars to do the infrastructure work that is necessary and the Government is not in a position to do this based on the fiscal challenges it now faces.

“We have to work towards this and we have to identify what are the priorities,” added Golding.

He said the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) has been mandated to take the development strategy laid out in the plan dubbed Vision 2030 and create a spatial plan which will show when and how each community is to be impacted from the projects to be implemented.

Golding was making the main presentation at the contract signing for the new Darling Street Wastewater Pumping Station being constructed in his West Kingston constituency.

The project will cost US$6.3 million with a contract period of 18 months. On completion, it is expected to solve many of the sewage problems in downtown Kingston.

The new plant will replace the 116-year-old facility which has backed up frequently, leaving raw sewage on the streets of downtown Kingston.

“We have had significant decay, a lot of it like this water system which has been neglected for years,” added Water and Housing Minister Dr Horace Chang as he explained the decision to fix the wastewater system.

Chang told those in attendance for the signing ceremony at the National Water Commission’s New Kingston headquarters that his ministry was working with the Inter-American Development Bank on a programme costing US$150 million over a five-year period to reduce non-revenue water in the Corporate Area and expand and improve the wastewater collection system.

Source: The Gleaner