SOME members of the Opposition have welcomed the announcement that $20 billion will be allocated in the budget to maintain secondary roads across the island.

According to minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, Senator Matthew Samuda, the allocation is to be included in the budget following the completion of the Government’s two-year, $40-billion road-improvement project — ‘Shared Prosperity through Accelerated Improvement to our Road Network’ (SPARK) programme.

“My understanding is that the instruction from the prime minister, through the permanent secretary to the NWA [National Works Agency], is that, post the SPARK programme, that $20 billion is to be allocated to the maintenance of secondary roads as a line item going forward,” he said as he fielded questions from the Opposition during Wednesday’s sitting of the Standing Finance Committee.

SPARK was designed to modernise more than 2,000 secondary, parochial and community roads across the island over two years.

Samuda also announced that coming out of SPARK a single registry of all roads is being compiled that will assist the Government in scheduling road works.

Opposition spokesperson for transport and works Mikael Phillips said he was happy to hear about the continued allocation for road maintenance “because I was just going to raise the issue to find out if SPARK is going to be a continued programme or is it just a two-year programme because even after two years, the whole issue of road maintenance will become an issue.”

Said Phillips: “Even after we do all this work through the SPARK, then there has to be a way in how it is that we maintain our roads. And we can’t act fast enough in getting that registry put together, be it municipal council roads, or National Works Agency-controlled roads, because there is no formal mechanism in how we maintain roads with a budget that is just woefully inadequate for a very long time. So that’s good news.”

Opposition Member of Parliament Lisa Hanna had earlier contended that there is not usually an adequate amount in the budget to satisfy the infrastructural work for road maintenance and asked if there is a real mechanism to address the shortfall in fixing the secondary roads.

Samuda, in responding, said that it is impatient of debate that the amount required to maintain secondary roads “probably needs another zero”, noting that the largest attempt to address it that he is aware of will be done through the SPARK programme.

“The allocations will obviously still have to grow even with what we’ve allocated with the SPARK programme, which is a massive allocation over the next two years. That will have to become a regular allocation if this item of maintenance of secondary roads is to truly achieve what the people want. So there is no illusion that this line item is indeed not sufficient to deliver what is required, though it is from our budget a large allocation. But the SPARK programme will address that and I think in the course of the budget debate, significantly more details will come on the SPARK programme,” he said.

Turning to the registry, Samuda said: “One of the elements that we expect to come as an output of the SPARK programme and certainly the work of our Spatial Data Management Unit at the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job creation will be a true registry of all roads, pathways, whether it is NWA roads, parish council, roads, farm roads, pathways, community roads, et cetera; we expect to, through the work of our Spatial Data Management Unit and indeed through the SPARK programme, to get that singular registry that will at least allow us to schedule works when they should be scheduled,” he said.

“The National Spatial Data Management Unit has already completed the work in terms of identifying the roads and creating that registry for nine parishes already, so we’re well on the way to ensure that the SPARK programme actually is able to address it, and that that registry becomes a reality,” he said.

Providing an update on the SPARK Programme in January, the prime minister had announced that the 63 Members of Parliament (MPs) will each be allocated a minimum of $150 million under the initiative.

Remaining amounts will be allocated to each constituency, depending on the volume of the road network to be repaired to ensure fairness, while an amount will be reserved by the Government to address roads that may not have been considered during consultations that are to be spearheaded by the Constituency Development Fund (CDF).

A breakdown of how the funds will be allocated shows that $20 billion of the amount will be set aside to address main roads where the rehabilitation/repairs are much more than resurfacing and may include the replacement of water and sewage infrastructure.

The remaining $20 billion will be used to rehabilitate parochial and community roads. Of this amount, $10 billion will be divided equally among the 63 constituencies.