
Andrew Holness|Jun 11, 2025 19:08
My government has committed 40 billion under the SPARK programme to repair and upgrade over 600 roads islandwide, with an additional 5 billion allocated for essential water and infrastructure works.
This is the largest road rehabilitation effort ever funded from Jamaica’s own resources, and it reflects a structured, data-driven approach to resolving a longstanding national issue.
We began by tackling one of the most fundamental challenges, properly documenting Jamaica’s road network. Many roads, especially in rural or informal communities, were not registered, were misclassified, or were “orphan roads” from subdivisions that had never been officially handed over to any government agency. This created confusion between the NWA, local government authorities, and parish councils, and delayed responses to legitimate concerns. We are correcting this by mapping, registering, and classifying every road in the country. This process also includes a special programme to standardize road names and unify national addresses, ensuring accountability and efficient planning.
Once roads are documented, we conduct a thorough assessment of their condition, allowing us to rank and prioritize repairs based on urgency, population impact, and economic importance. With that, we develop a 10-year infrastructure plan, because it is simply not realistic to repair in one year roads that haven’t been touched in 40, 50, or even 60 years.
While as the government we are responsible for fixing the roads, we must acknowledge that our road issues have persisted for a very long time.
Roads have a natural lifespan of 7 to 15 years, depending on construction quality and maintenance. When maintenance is neglected over time, roads inevitably fall into disrepair.
In the end, what truly matters is not just what is fixed today, having a consistent, accountable, and effective programme to maintain and improve roads over time.
That is what we are delivering. A government that does not wait for an election to fix roads, but commits to a decade of structured progress.
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