WHEN Prime Minister P J Patterson officially opens the Montego Bay to Negril leg of the North Coast Highway tomorrow, he is expected to announce the cost of the problem-plagued project.

Months ago, the Jamaica Labour Party claimed an almost J$1-billion cost overrun and according to an Observer source, the project has now hit the $2.8-billion (US$60-million) mark.

The project began in 1997 and was slated to be completed in 1999 at a cost of about US$45 million ($2.16 billion) by Bosung Engineering which came in with a bid that was lower than the engineers’ estimate. The South Korean firm was hoping that the project would be its toehold in the Caribbean but was forced to quit after it ran into difficulty finding the funds to do the work when problems surfaced in the Asian financial market.

Work was halted as the government compiled a team of local contractors, overseen by the National Works Agency, to finish the project that was supposed to be a major fillip for the Patterson administration.

But after it missed yet another deadline last December, all attempts to get an official update on the cost have been unsuccessful. On Tuesday, as clean-up work continued in preparation for tomorrow’s opening, project officials were tight-lipped about the new price tag but blamed the unspecified increase on a combination of a change in contractor and inflation.

“Anytime a project is delayed, costs keep going up and up just due to inflation factors,” explained project engineer Hank Mann. “The cost of doing business goes up every year. People want more money, workmen want an increase in wages so the longer you delay a project, the more the costs go up.”

But he stressed that the quality of the work being done was very good.

However, some St James residents, like 23 year-old unemployed tiler of Mosquito Cove, Easton Godfrey, are unimpressed with the two-lane roadway. He told the Observer Tuesday, as he sat at a shop beside the highway, that the money would have been better spent providing employment opportunities for people like himself, and fixing the roads to communities like his.

An elderly Pearline Taggart had mixed feelings.

She has no major problem with the highway but she does have a problem with its speeding motorists — two of whom have already ended up in her front yard — and the elevated surface of the highway also causes slight flooding just below her doorstep.

Like Taggart, answering the question ‘was it worth it’ is difficult for the president of the Negril Chamber of Commerce, Kenric Davis. He still has fresh memories of the havoc the project wreaked on the resort’s tourism industry.

“It’s one of those questions where it is almost a paradox. Yes, in the final analysis, it has worked out to be a plus for tourism because you can take less than an hour now from Montego Bay to Negril. But the suffering that people had to go through to get there was totally uncalled for. It was a waste of money; the project was basically mismanaged and my concern is that nobody is held responsible for these kinds of things,” Davis said.

“I am concerned about the price tag because it’s the taxpayers who will eventually have to foot the bill. I would very much like to know what was the final cost on it. It could be looked at as a fillip in the tourism sector but it was really painful getting there.”

His counterpart at the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mark Kerr-Jarrett, was just as curious about the price tag but also pointed to the benefits of the improved roadway. The project, he said, has opened up new areas that can be developed and has significantly slashed commute time.

“The drive to Negril is now a pleasure. In terms of ease of commute, I think the project was essential and needed to be done. However, did we get value for money? That needs to be seriously analysed,” he said. “I don’t think we should take this and beat government over the head with, but I think as a nation and as implementing bodies within the national administration, (an analysis has) to be done with the point being that we learn to be more efficient with the taxpayers’ dollars. I will be interested to see the figures on the final analysis with regards to what the cost of implementation was.”