Westmoreland councillors want more for road repairs
Published:Monday | June 13, 2022 | 12:05 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Councillors at the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation are demanding direct budgetary allocation to rehabilitate roads under the management of the country’s municipalities, similarly to what obtains with farm roads.
Cebert McFarlane, councillor for the Leamington Division, argued that many municipal roads in the parish are in a state of disrepair and require much more funding than the “irregular allocation” of $6 million that comes from the Equalisation Fund annually disbursed per division.
“The parish council in its present state [doesn’t] have the capacity to do rehabilitation work on any of those roads, so they will not be fixed for the next 50 years,” said McFarlane during Thursday’s meeting.
“I have been here since 2007 and we have been sending resolutions to the Equalisation Fund repeatedly, and I can’t recall having more than two responses from the fund. Therefore, Mr Chairman, that has become nonsense,” the senior PNP councillor said.
The Equalisation Fund was created in 1997 and is financed by 10 per cent of monies collected islandwide from property taxes. All 13 municipal corporations and the Portmore council are allocated upon request, a percentage of the fund to carry out critical infrastructure work in their respective divisions.
Accordingly, McFarlane noted: “If any meaningful road repair is to take place, it cannot be through the non-responsive system of the Equalisation Fund.”
FILLED THE GAPS
While the Equalisation Fund has filled the gaps for councillors over the years, McFarlane gave notice of a motion to table a resolution calling for direct budgetary allocation at the next general sitting of the corporation, calling for the Ministry of Local Government to provide adequate funding to all councillors islandwide.
McFarlane argued that two-thirds of the allocation for roadworks in the national Budget is earmarked for roads in St Catherine and Kingston and St Andrew, with the other 12 parishes to share the remaining one-third.
“It is time that we move past the narrow political view where some members of parliament are telling people that this (municipal road) is the responsibility of the council, when each councillor is allocated $800,000 per month,” he revealed.
“Parish councils will never be able to build anything other than a platform on the road because any single road rehabilitation requires no less than $70 million and you get $6 million,’’ he explained. “We need budgetary allocation for the fixing of rural roads.”
Further, he explained that when a councillor receives funding to rehabilitate a road at the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation, it puts them in a position where they have to be running behind a minister, begging to get a road fixed.
“As elected representatives, we must have enough pride to stop the foolishness,” he said of begging and pleading to an MP for support in carrying out aspects of their jobs.