The chronic state of Jamaica’s roads, riddled with potholes and frequent digging, highlights the urgent need for consistent and effective road maintenance. From damaged car axles to drenched pedestrians, poorly maintained roads affect everyone. Proper planning and accountability could transform this recurring issue, saving time, resources, and the frustration of Jamaicans who endure the daily hazards of neglected infrastructure.

Published Thursday, January 5, 1978

Ministry of pothole construction

By Franklin McKnight

WHAT DOES JAMAICA PRODUCE MOST? Right! Babies and potholes. We have a ministry in Jamaica which keeps figures of how many babies are born, how much food the babies are not getting, and how much food the government is giving to nursing mothers.
 
There is no government ministry solely dedicated to Pothole Construction and Road Destruction. You may ask about the Ministry of Works or the Ministry of Communication or Local Government Ministry, but none of these have the sole responsibility of pothole construction and road destruction.
 
Yet, this business of potholes affects all of us. Not only the men who drive cars, not only the man in Kingston, but all of us. Take, for example, you who go by the JOS bus: the bus speeding right on the bumper of a car, you and the other people in the bus shouting “Driver I have a weak heart. Somebody else “Driver mind mi lose me belly. “Driver! Driver!” The car driver sees the pothole just in time and swerves, whoops! The bus too big to swerve. Too late! The driver jams on the brakes and ... everybody rolls up to the front of the bus and starts cussing; who stepped on whose toe and whose orange dropped out of basket, and so on.
 
You who don't take the bus at all, you have on your nice new frock or your ranking three-piece suit and you are going to some function to make people look at you. You reach this place where everybody looking at you and you holding your head high. A big truck comes on at the same time, the wheel finds a pothole with some water in it  ... and splash! You are sprinkled in brown.
 
If we had a ministry just to check potholes created and roads destroyed, maybe the guys wouldn't treat the pothole business so. A pothole on the Hope Road. Two-three weeks. They come, throw some stone and asphalt in the hole and leave it rough for your car to press it down. Or they throw some marl in the hole and come back to it when the marl washes out again.
 
How often do you see a nice piece of road laid down yesterday and today either the Water Commission or some other set digging it up and putting something under it? Check again how they lay pipes in the road for yards and yards, like out past the 12-mile post in St Thomas. They dig up the road, they throw the dirt into the road, and leave a nice trench for the minibus to run over into.
 
So apart, from this ministry doing something that affects all of us, it would show its use in other areas, it would be a revenue earning ministry, because every time a man’s car axle or front end “mash up”, the government earns taxes off the new one that the man has to buy. It would be a generator of employment because every time they dig up the road, like in St Thomas, two or three guys get some little red flags and sit down waving or sleeping. And then again, every time the road gets dug up, a group get money to dig it deeper and throw more marl into it.
 
And, when we destroy the road so badly that you don’t even know what is the old surface, a truck comes with some gravel, another one with asphalt, and two workmen on each of these. Another two men are boiling tar or dumplings and one man sits in the shade writing in a little book.
 
So, don't matter what people say, any area of Jamaican life which affects all the people, any area of our life which brings revenue and creates employment, must have a ministry. Give us a Ministry of Pothole Construction and Road Destruction.

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