WESTERN BUREAU – A 72 million euro contract for the construction of the third leg of the Northern Coastal Highway – Ocho Rios, St Ann, to Fair Prospect, Portland – is expected to be signed in June, according to the transport and works minister, Robert Pickersgill.

“Right now tenders for the contract are out and the bidding period ends on February 25,” Pickersgill told the Observer on Tuesday. The evaluation period, he said, will be completed by April.

Funding for the project, which involves the improvement of 120 kilometres of roadway, is being provided by the European Union.

The transport and work minister said work on the highway will begin soon after the contract is signed, and work should be completed by May 2008.

Ocho Rios/Fair Prospect is the final leg of the Northern Coastal Highway which will link Negril, Westmoreland and Portland. Work on the first leg running from Montego Bay to Negril, started in September 1999 and was eventually completed in 2002 after missing numerous deadlines.

That leg should have been completed in 2001 at a cost of US$48 million, but ended up costing US$ 73 million.

Work on the second leg, which spans 95 kilometres between Montego Bay and Ocho Rios, and was budgeted to cost US$100 million, is ongoing and has missed several deadlines. That segment is now expected to be completed at a cost not less than US$120 million. The increase in cost and the delay in the completion of that segment, the government has said, stems from an expansion of the scope of the work.

Changes already incorporated in the project include:

. the addition of bypasses and underpasses;

. paving of shoulders of the roadway;

. more alignments;

. the establishment of a four-way lane from the vicinity of the Sangster Airport in Montego Bay to the Sea Castle Hotel area in Rose Hall; and

. the relocation of utilities, and land acquisition.

Pickersgill told the Observer that the government has learnt from the “mistakes” it had made on the first two segments of the project and has taken steps to ensure that the third leg will be completed on time and within budget.

“We have learnt our lessons from segment one and two of the highway project so we don’t think we will have a repeat of what happened, on the next leg,” the minister said.

He noted that already, the government has acquired most of the land required for the development of the Ocho Rios to Fair Prospect leg of the project.

Last Saturday, Prime Minister P J Patterson, in his address to party supporters at the People’s National Party annual conference in Kingston, named the signing of the agreement and breaking ground, as one of the things he hopes to have completed before he demits office.

-cummingsm@jamaicaobserver.com