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Dean's Palisadoes warning
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Mr Robert Pickersgill, the minister of housing, water, transport and works, told the House of Representatives in late July that work on the Palisadoes road had "started in earnest".
Mr Pickersgill, opening the sectoral debate, was responding to a story carried in the Sunday Observer reporting Mr Stephen Shaw, the communications and customer service manager at the National Works Agency (NWA), as saying that work had not yet started on the road.
The same story also reported Mr Dean Peart, the minister of local government and environment, as saying that a contract for the construction had not yet been given out.
Minister Pickersgill's presentation made it clear to us that all arms of the Government were not on the same page. For based on what we saw when we travelled the Palisadoes road on Sunday before the arrival of Hurricane Dean, some work had indeed been done on the road.
Huge boulders are stacked high along a few sections of the southern side of the road, apparently in keeping with the recommendations from a coastal protection study done with assistance from the Cuban Government, key stakeholders such as the University of the West Indies, the National Environment and Planning Agency and the Ministry of Local Government and the Environment.
So finally, after almost three years of footdragging, the Government has started to do something about this road, which, we must again point out, is the only access road to the Norman Manley International Airport and Port Royal.
However, we are far from satisfied with this performance, because the information we have is that what has so far been done is merely temporary. The Government, we are told, can't find the money for the job. We hope that what we have heard is not true.
This is an issue that we have raised repeatedly in these columns and on our news pages for the better part of two years after storm surges triggered by Hurricane Ivan in September 2004 dumped huge mounds of sand - some as high as six feet - onto the Palisadoes road. For two days the road could not be used, and Kingston, the capital city, was effectively cut off from air link for those two days.
We had warned that by neglecting to deal with this problem we were courting disaster, and we had hoped that the Government would have appreciated the urgency of the matter.
Luckily, Hurricane Dean, on its approach, shifted to the south of Jamaica and all we got were the outer bands of this dangerous category 4 hurricane. But even that was enough to block the road for hours yesterday, and the authorities worked feverishly to have it cleared, no doubt in an effort to save the Government embarrassment.
We shudder to think what would have happened to us, and indeed, the Palisadoes road, had we gotten the full brunt of the storm. Maybe the prime minister would not have been able to go walking on the road yesterday for another photo opportunity.
We can't say it often enough. This road needs urgent attention. We ignore its imperfections at our peril. What we got from Hurricane Dean on Sunday was a scary warning that we need to heed.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Mr Robert Pickersgill, the minister of housing, water, transport and works, told the House of Representatives in late July that work on the Palisadoes road had "started in earnest".
Mr Pickersgill, opening the sectoral debate, was responding to a story carried in the Sunday Observer reporting Mr Stephen Shaw, the communications and customer service manager at the National Works Agency (NWA), as saying that work had not yet started on the road.
The same story also reported Mr Dean Peart, the minister of local government and environment, as saying that a contract for the construction had not yet been given out.
Minister Pickersgill's presentation made it clear to us that all arms of the Government were not on the same page. For based on what we saw when we travelled the Palisadoes road on Sunday before the arrival of Hurricane Dean, some work had indeed been done on the road.
Huge boulders are stacked high along a few sections of the southern side of the road, apparently in keeping with the recommendations from a coastal protection study done with assistance from the Cuban Government, key stakeholders such as the University of the West Indies, the National Environment and Planning Agency and the Ministry of Local Government and the Environment.
So finally, after almost three years of footdragging, the Government has started to do something about this road, which, we must again point out, is the only access road to the Norman Manley International Airport and Port Royal.
However, we are far from satisfied with this performance, because the information we have is that what has so far been done is merely temporary. The Government, we are told, can't find the money for the job. We hope that what we have heard is not true.
This is an issue that we have raised repeatedly in these columns and on our news pages for the better part of two years after storm surges triggered by Hurricane Ivan in September 2004 dumped huge mounds of sand - some as high as six feet - onto the Palisadoes road. For two days the road could not be used, and Kingston, the capital city, was effectively cut off from air link for those two days.
We had warned that by neglecting to deal with this problem we were courting disaster, and we had hoped that the Government would have appreciated the urgency of the matter.
Luckily, Hurricane Dean, on its approach, shifted to the south of Jamaica and all we got were the outer bands of this dangerous category 4 hurricane. But even that was enough to block the road for hours yesterday, and the authorities worked feverishly to have it cleared, no doubt in an effort to save the Government embarrassment.
We shudder to think what would have happened to us, and indeed, the Palisadoes road, had we gotten the full brunt of the storm. Maybe the prime minister would not have been able to go walking on the road yesterday for another photo opportunity.
We can't say it often enough. This road needs urgent attention. We ignore its imperfections at our peril. What we got from Hurricane Dean on Sunday was a scary warning that we need to heed.
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