North Gully repair to begin in two weeks
WESTERN BUREAU — A $180-million repair project is slated to begin on Montego Bay’s North Gully within two weeks. This comes almost two years after the roadway was damaged by heavy rains and four months after the contract was awarded to M & M Construction.
The NWA officially handed over the North Gully to the contractors last week.
The work, which is to correct damage done by heavy rains in January 2001, is slated to take nine months to complete.
“It will involve the reinstatement of concrete drains and channels in the Upper King Street area as well as the paving of other sections of the gully,” the National Works Agency’s (NWA’s) western region community relations officer, Stephen Shaw told the Observer.
The NWA had a hard time finding a contractor willing to work on the project, sections of which fall in the volatile Canterbury community. Like other projects across the island, some companies contacted as potential contractors submitted prices that included sums earmarked for protection money they anticipated would have to be paid to secure the site and keep work going.
During the January 2001 rains, several large slabs of concrete were wrenched from the gully’s foundation, protective walls collapsed and channels disrupted.
Sections of the flood-prone gully are sometimes impassable and pose a major inconvenience to motorists as well as residents who, in the past, have staged at least two demonstrations to press for its repairs.