Just about everything in Port Maria and the districts on the outskirts of this seaside town on Jamaica’s north-east coast is covered in dust. Buildings, motor vehicles, foliage, food. Nothing is spared.

Walk into Pet’s Bar, Grocery and Pork Centre in Deer Hall, about 500 metres east of Port Maria, and you’ll see evidence of the nuisance being suffered by people in this section of St Mary where the main road linking the parish to St Ann and Portland is under repair.

Government officials say the work – part of the North Coast Highway project spanning 96 kilometres of roadway from Ocho Rios to Dover in St Mary – will be completed in June next year. But that deadline is too far off for the people of Port Maria.

“The road is deplorable. They’re taking too long,” said Bobby Pottinger, custos of St Mary, last Wednesday. “I wrote to the minister six weeks ago to come and have a meeting with us. I’m awaiting a reply.”

Pottinger was not exaggerating about the condition of the road. Last Wednesday, the Observer watched as an ambulance, its siren blaring, crawled west from the courthouse over the bumpy, muddy surface.

“By the time that reach hospital, whoever in there must dead,” quipped a man standing among the weather-beaten graves in the yard of the St Mary Parish Church where a funeral service was in progress.

“Look at the road, man. It’s a disgrace!” he added.

Water trucks drive the route, sprinkling the road, but that, the town’s folk said, doesn’t alleviate the problem long enough.

Outside the Port Maria Primary School, Diana, a vendor, complained that the dust was destroying her goods. “I have to use a rag to wipe off the dust,” she told the Observer, pointing out that the town has been in that condition since January this year.

Across the street from Diana and other vendors, three year-old Craig Jefferson sat on a concrete slab close to the edge of a large water-filled hole dug in the side of the road by the road builders.

A few metres up the street, vendor Vanley Young said he was forced to stop selling clothes because of the dust. He now sells only shoes, and even those, he said, are “getting bad colour” from the dust.

One of Young’s customers, Angella Barrett, was in the store trying on a pair of shoes when the Observer visited. “I work at Beaches Boscobel and I travel to work everyday. It is terrible,” she said of the dust and the condition of the road.

Sharca Brown, who operates a bar and clothing store in the town, also complained about the effect the dust was having on her business.

In between washing out drinking glasses to serve three customers, Brown voiced a concern that was repeated by almost everyone in Port Maria with whom the Observer spoke. “They should have come and told us what’s going on,” she said.

Pottinger responded with a shake of his head when the Observer asked whether the authorities had sought to talk to the town about the work – which will include the construction of culverts, bridges and a new road surface – and how long it would take.

Repeated attempts by the Observer between last Thursday and Saturday to get in touch with the Danish construction firm Pihl and the Ministry of Works for a comment were unsuccessful.

“The problem we’re having in St Mary is that there is no office to make complaints,” said Pottinger. “It’s affecting business. We want to just get it right.”