Dear Editor,

There has been a recent discord in Parliament about the Montego Bay development project to create a perimeter bypass road to make transit much easier, as well as giving a stimulus to the micro economy after hiring workers to do the project. While I may not like how China Harbour Engineering Company reportedly treats its employees, as well as how it handles disputes between its workers and the company, this matter should be solved post-haste, and I think that they should be awarded the contract for the development project.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that there should be more accountability from the prime minister and the Government he leads about project costs, management and administrative process, oversight, etc, as well as creating a competitive bidding process to ensure inefficiency and eliminate possible corruption. The Government needs checks and balances in it as it is. However, even if they have a competitive bidding process, chances are China Harbour Engineering Company would still get the contract, as it did the analysis of the project in question, not to mention has proved to be reliable with previous projects. In an important infrastructural project, regardless of whether it’s a local or foreign contractor doing it, reliability beats everything else.

Furthermore, ratifying the project would give a marginally good economic stimulus, while leaving a piece of infrastructure to be put to use in the future, which may yield better long-term dividends than just handing out grants to each citizen just to have them uncollected, or each constituency getting a set amount to only be fizzled out through local government bureaucracy and not reach actual citizens.

As for the Opposition leader, if he wanted to address the matter of fairness to taxpayers, then I wonder where was his voice when our roads are frequently eroded after being built, then patched up, only for the process to repeat and truly waste taxpayers’ dollars. Or when a new road is built but the National Water Commission pulls up and goes digging when it should have done its work before the construction and we then have to spend more money to repair it. Now, that’s a waste.

Marcus White

whitemarc918@gmail.com