A stubborn intransigence on the part of the government’s National Workers Agency (NWA) was yesterday being blamed for the death of 12-year-old first former, Shakara Harris, who was knocked by a car as she tried to cross Kingston’s Constant Spring Road to enter the Merl Grove High School for girls.

The little girl’s death so traumatised other children that 10 of them had to be rushed to hospital yesterday, mostly suffering from asthma attacks. Four were admitted for treatment.

The school says that the NWA – the agency that has responsibility for the maintenance of the national infrastructure – has resisted its pleas to replace a pedestrian at the Merl Grove entrance after that section of Constant Road was widened last year.

Additionally, a plan for an overhead crossing that was on the plans at the time of the upgrading, disappeared from the drawings, apparently because the government did not have the money to finance it.

If these things were in place, it was being suggested, it was far less likely that Shakara, of Glengoffe, St Catherine, would have been knocked down.

So fed up have the school authorities become that it is now intent of going ahead with the overhead crossing on its own accord.

“Recognising the long problem with the crossing, the school has initiated a project to construct an overhead bridge to cross the road,” said a Merl Grove statement, signed by the school’s chairman, Dr Alfred Sangster and its principal, Amy Allen. “We are reliably informed that the overhead bridge was a part of the original road project but was deleted.”

Merl Grove said it was in discussions with the construction and engineering firm, TankWeld as well as students of the engineering department at the University of Technology about the design and construction of the proposed overhead walkway.

The accident happened at around 6:10 am when Shakara, on her way to school, was hit by a car being driven Wycliffe Johnson, a musician of 21 Washington Close Kingston 10.

Johnson was arrested and charged with manslaughter, but released on $150,000 bail. He is to appear in the Half way Tree Magistrates court on February 19.

Public relations manager at the National Works Agency, Vando Palmer, in an interview on RJR’s Hotline, said his understanding was that the child was hit down while crossing the road where the old pedestrian crossing existed before the road was widened last year.

Extensive discussions, he said, were held with the chairman of the school board, principal and vice principal, advising them of the new crossing at the lights and advised them to warn students of the dangers of using the section of the road where the old crossing existed to get across.

Palmer promised to visit the school and talk to the students about the proper way of crossing the road.

But the accident has refocused attention on the long-running quarrel between Merl Grove and the NWA over the need for crossing – an issue that last August also gained the attention of the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC), the city’s local government.

At the time Lee Clarke, the chairman of the KSAC’s building and town planning committee expressed his fears for the safety of children crossing the widened road without either a pedestrian crossing or the overhead walkway.

The walkway, Lee stressed, was part of the original plans.

But Patrick Rose, the head of the NWA’s planning and research department, told councillors that while the overhead walkway “would be ideal” there was no money to build it.

Allen at the time described as “unacceptable” the NWA’s decision to neither build the walkway nor replace the pedestrian crossing that was removed with the road upgrading and the government agency demanded that children cross at a stop light down the road from their school.

Yesterday the old arguments were being thrown at the NWA.

“Certainly it (Shakara’s death) could have been avoided if a pedestrian crossing was in place,” Allen told the Observer. “We have been making every effort for the authorities to understand the danger that was being posed not only for our students but to pedestrians generally.”

This position was being largely echoed by Allen’s predecessor, Vera Nugent, who recalled the schoo’sl parent/teachers association (PTA) had struggled during her tenure, before the widening of the road, to create a pedestrian crossing at the school’s entrance.

“At time we were told it was illegal,” Nugent said. “We, however, went ahead and marked it.”

In fact, in yesterday’s statement, Merl Grove said that only recently Allen had sought assistance from both the police and the education ministry over the crossing.

The school also pointed out that there were no signs along the road to indicate to motorists that they were approaching a school and neither was there clear road markings at the stop light crossing which the NWA said the students should use.

“The signals are inadequate for a pedestrian crossing,” the school said.