NWA assures Dykes Hill residents damaged roadway a 'priority'
Published:Tuesday | August 1, 2017 | 12:00 AM
There is no timeline for the fixing of a roadway in north Clarendon that was almost cut in half during the mid-May floods, but the authorities have assured upset residents of Dykes Hill that the issue is being treated as an emergency.
A culvert beneath the main road in Dykes Hill crumbled during the rains, causing a deep collapse and almost splitting the roadway, save for a connecting, narrow and treacherous strip a few inches wide.
Stephen Shaw, the communications manager at the National Works Agency (NWA), has rejected the residents' claim that they are being neglected, noting that an alternative route has been opened.
"The issue at Dykes Hill requires special attention. We have had to do a special design for a drainage feature in that particular area," he told The Gleaner.
The design, Shaw explained, has been completed and its cost being worked out to have it tendered, with other projects, this week through the emergency procurement system.
"We have every intention of undertaking work along this particular corridor in very short order," Shaw said, declining to give any specific timelines. "Maybe at the end of the week we'll be in a position to indicate some sort of timeline based on where we would have reached in the [tender] process."
More than 100 roadways were affected by rains that devastated Clarendon, while causing significant damage in at least nine parishes.
The cost of the damage was put at around $3 billion, according to the Planning Institute of Jamaica.