MONTEGO BAY, St James – Minister of Transport and Works Robert Pickersgill will this week address the troubling matter of cost overruns and delays on the 268-kilometre Northern Coastal Highway Improvement Project that connects Negril, Westmoreland to Port Antonio, Portland.

“There was an article last Sunday in a newspaper and I am going to do a response to that article on Monday or Tuesday, so I won’t deal with it here today,” Pickersgill said, when asked by the Sunday Observer to give reasons for the reported massive cost overruns on the project.

The minister was participating yesterday in the signing of a US$50.276 million ($3.2 billion) contract in Rose Hall, St James for Segment 2A of the project which runs from Greenside in Trelawny to Montego Bay, the St James capital.

Although the minister declined to name names, the Sunday Finance section of the Sunday Observer had reported last week that the project was massively over the budget projected in 2001, when the construction of the highway was already underway for four years.

In all, government had allocated $19 billion to build the roadway, 78 per cent more than the $10.6 billion that government in 2001 estimated would be the price tag for the total project.

When asked if he would be denying the report, Pickersgill replied: “No, no; I will be commenting on it.”

The highway project that runs along Jamaica’s north shore is divided into three segments: segment one runs from Negril to Montego Bay; segment two from Montego Bay to Ocho Rios; while segment three covers Ocho Rios to Port Antonio. Segment Two, however is divided into four sections.

Yesterday, Pickersgill told the contract signing ceremony held in the conference room of the Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort, that work on the Montego Bay to Greenside leg of segment two was delayed due to a request from tourism interests in the resort city of Montego Bay, for a revision of the scope of the works. The revised version, he said, included the dualisation of the corridor from Montego Bay to Rose Hall.

“Even while this was being given consideration by the ministry, numerous projects were approved in St James and Trelawny and analyses have shown that the traffic volume would be significantly higher than previous projections made at the time of the design more than 10 years ago,” the works minister explained.

He added that because of the change in the scope of the works, the Montego Bay to Greenside leg of the project was removed from the firm, Jose Cartellone Construcciones Civiles which in 2001 was awarded the contract for the construction of segment two of the highway project.

That leg has since been awarded to the Danish firm, E Pihl and Sons.

Work on that section will begin later this month and is scheduled to be completed in September 2007.

“Two lanes of carriageway along the corridor, as well as 50 per cent of the four-lane portion of the road is scheduled for completion in March 2007, before the start of World Cup Cricket,” Pickersgill added.

The remaining portion of the four-lane carriageway is to be completed by the end of the contract period.

The Caribbean Development Bank is providing funding for the project.

cummingsm@jamaicaobserver.com