Roadworks change lives, communities, force small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Barbican, Constant Spring, Three Miles/Hagley Park Road into losses, and other have dire consequences. Not to be self-referential, but I didn’t go to Wolmer’s like my sibling, as Dad’s Red Gal Ring gas station crashed after protracted roadworks. Business clusters beleaguered by roadworks must unite to survive and get reparation.

This is not charity, for no Constant Spring market vendor begged, and Hagley Park SMEs never asked Minister Nigel Clarke for grants, but are casualties of Cabinet’s poorly executed decisions. It is not fair, and we need their jobs and add-ons to gross domestic products (GDP) to meet national targets. Prime Minister Andrew Holness, please throw them a life jacket!

Kingston is awash with roadworks as cash from China’s Belt & Road and the late PetroCaribe Fund power long-planned projects, so front or back yards are sliced like slivers of a birthday cake to widen roads and landmarks eroded. Cabinet’s double standard to compensate owners whose unproductive land they impair, and not owners; and SMEs whose production, balance sheets they impair is unfair. Just compensate both “an dun wid it”!

We hear speeches about funds for new entrepreneurs, yet none about more mature entrepreneurs at Constant Spring Market and Hagley Park Road who employ many, pay taxes, and shout for help. ( Sunday Observer, March 24, 2019, Sharlene Hendricks reporting) What is Cabinet’s budget for the collateral damage of roadworks? How can we save production and jobs from roadworks predations even as we try to grow more?

First, Cabinet needs to inventory ground zero sites such as Hagley Park Road and help firms. Second, we need construction-mitigation strategies. The University of Wisconsin’s School of Public Affairs refers to these as “measures that cities take to counteract the negative effects of construction”. We used these in revamping the Toronto Transit Service, but these are not used here.

Prime Minister Holness must mandate a ‘Manual of Good Practice for Construction Mitigation’ as the bible for works in the public space. Consultants and a consortium of water, road, electrical, disaster management firms can do it in six months. These protocols would be scalable and cover major accidents and emergencies too.

So what mitigation can the State and businesses do now? A Cabinet decision crippled my business and I need help to survive roadworks — approve it! Politicians use a false equivalent to say, “You may lose now, but in future your business will be great!” Not so! Cash is to business as blood to us, so lose cash flow and it dies. Roads are not improved to help businesses but to speed traffic flows; improve freight, passenger logistics; cut costs and time. No one can stop to buy again!

The State has the institutional memory to map the impact of roadworks on every demographic — pedestrian, commuter; utilities, SMEs; but the data is not used; no modelling, no analyses, no manuals to guide execution or mitigation strategies. The “block di road an’ who fi dead dead, and who fi live live” mindset can’t work!

Prime Minister, please appoint an “infrastructure ombudsman” to ensure the Manual of Construction Mitigation Protocols is enforced and to adjudicate thorny issues. Citizens understand there is a price for progress and are prepared to pay, but gratuitous indifference by agencies, measures which harm, and poor joined-up government are unacceptable.

For example, Cabinet has a fund for business start-ups to produce and create jobs, but none for saving a business which is already producing and employing people but in harm’s way because of State roadworks. What a contradiction! Business clusters need briefing of a more granular sort than normal work schedule — noise, dust, odour, mud, wastewater, detours, cul-de-sacs; disruption to water, light, telephone, cable; where and when. Any benefit of roadworks to business is small, incidental or accidental. Yet a firm may go bankrupt, so to unite business clusters is key.

With dialogue some firms will see no future and leave. Those with firm roots, as they own the shop, should execute conjoined survival strategies; for example, cut prices to reward customers who brave mud and dust; offer rolling discounts from shop to shop and they will see you really want their patronage; go for high turnover, small margin; advertise, make posters, banners as a cluster — don’t rely on Bucky Massa project signs. Your goal is not business as usual, but to emerge from road repairs hell alive, even if weaken.

An embattled business cluster must maintain dialogue with project managers and front-line workers who move barriers or operate the backhoe. Bureaucrats and politicians care but they are paid on the 25th like clockwork and most have dim memories of real life after three terms as Member of Parliament — change them. They merely dispense words therapy. So be resolute, insist on reparation, as Cabinet put your firm in harm’s way and must see you back on solid ground. Stay conscious!

Franklin Johnston, D Phil (Oxon), is a strategist and project manager; Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (UK); and lectures in logistics and supply chain management at Mona School of Business and Management, The University of the West Indies. Send comments to the Observer or franklinjohnstontoo@gmail.com.