Member of Parliament for Manchester North West, Mikael Phillips, has drawn attention to the plight of residents in the Troy community in his constituency who he said are placed in danger whenever it rains.

This follows the collapse of the 125-year-old Troy bridge which spans the Troy river on the border with Southern Trelawny following heavy rains in August.

Apart from his own constituency, Phillips said the bridge serves farmers in neighbouring North East Manchester, North and South Trelawny and as far away as St Elizabeth.

Since the bridge collapsed, a video showing residents using a makeshift zipline to cross the river below has gone viral.

“My fear is that very soon (someone is going to get hurt),” Phillips said while noting that “for the residents to move from Manchester to South Trelawny they have created their own zip line which is very dangerous,” said Phillips during his recent contribution to the State of the Constituency Debate in the House of Representatives.

And, he is not impressed by the response he has received to date from the relevant authority, the National Works Agency (NWA). Phillips said that having approached the government agency he was told that it would take six months to do the geological work then another six months to complete the design “and then hopefully it can meet the budget”.

“While that happens, there are persons, when there’s no rain they walk in the river bed to get to the other side (and) when there’s rain they’re ziplining persons over (to) the other side. We have a responsibility for the safety of these citizens…and I’m asking you Madam Speaker [Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert] as my neighbouring Member of Parliament for us to have an urgent intervention even if in the short-term we get a bailey bridge for them [residents] to just cross but we cannot allow persons to risk their lives,” Phillips pleaded.

He lamented that the alternative to the risky zip line is for farmers to travel more than 20 miles around the site of the collapsed bridge on roads he described as not even fit for a donkey to get their produce to market. 

“I wish we would have gotten the same response as the member for St Andrew East Rural,” he said, referencing the constituency of the wife of the Prime Minister, Juliet Holness.

Just shy of one year after a major breakaway on the Gordon Town Road following heavy rainfall the previous November, the road was officially reopened on October 29. The $187 million dollar project came in approximately $37 million under budget.

Phillips noted that the cost of repairing the Troy bridge would be a quarter of what it took to fix the Gordon Town breakaway.