Living dangerously!

Member of Parliament (MP) for Manchester North Western, Mikael Phillips, on Thursday painted a daring and dangerous picture of residents using makeshift ziplines to cross the Troy River, in the wake of the collapse of the Troy Bridge in August, which the MP says was about 125 years old.

He described as dangerous the chance his constituents take with their lives each time they cross using this method, and appealed to member of parliament for the neighbouring constituency of Trelawny South, Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert, for urgent help in getting the bridge fixed.

Phillips, who was making his contribution to the State of the Constituency Debate, told the House of Representatives that in appealing to the National Works Agency (NWA), he was given the runaround.

“They are giving us a timeline that it is going to take six months to do geological works, then six months to design and then, hopefully, it can get in the budget. But while that happens, there are persons who, when there is no rain, they are walking in the riverbed to get to the other side, and when there is rain, they are ziplining over the other side.

“We have a responsibility just for the safety of these residents, and I am asking you, Madam Speaker, as my neighbouring member of parliament, for us to have an urgent intervention, even if in the short term we get a Bailey Bridge for them to cross. But we cannot allow persons to risk their lives, and farmers driving 20-odd miles on roads that not even donkey should go on them. So I am asking you, Madam Speaker, let us join forces in getting this done in the shortest space of time.”

Afterwards, Phillips told The Gleaner that Dalrymple-Philibert had agreed to raise the matter with Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who has portfolio responsibility.

Phillips provided amateur video footage showing a man being strapped into a makeshift bucket seat before being pulled by ropes across a gaping chasm, much to the amusement of his colleagues.

Phillips said that in speaking with the NWA, he had been hoping to get a similar response to what the member of parliament for East Rural St Andrew got in respect of a major breakaway along the Gordon Town main road. He was referencing the official reopening of the roadway last Friday after being closed to vehicular traffic for almost a year. It was completed under budget at a cost of $187.7 million.

“We would have got the same response because the cost of repairing this bridge will be a quarter of the cost of repairing the breakaway,” he said.