Portmore residents continued to express their opposition to the conversion of the Causeway to a toll road with a three-hour peaceful demonstration in front of the Ministry of Transport and Works on Maxfield Avenue in Kingston yesterday and repeated their demand for an immediate meeting with Minister Robert Pickersgill on the issue.

“This is our last resort. We have tried to get in touch with the ministry a number of times and they have ignored us,” Councillor Dr Andrew Wheatly told the Observer. “I hope that at the end of the day he (Pickersgill) realises that we want them to consider the people of Portmore and not their whim and fancy. At the end of the day we want the Causeway to be left open, it is the only way.”

The Causeway is being expanded to become a leg of Highway 2000 and will attract a toll when it is completed. But the residents, most of whom travel to Kingston daily to work, are opposed to the plan and have said that they paid for use of the Causeway when they bought their houses in the sprawling St Catherine community.

They want the Government to leave the Causeway as an alternative to the toll road and say they intend to take their grouse to court.