MINISTER with responsibility for works Robert Morgan has scoffed at the persistent criticisms of the proposed One Road Authority by Mayor of Kingston Andrew Swaby and other local government representatives, describing their critique as premature and misguided.

“While it is good for the mayor to object, and it is his right to object, and I welcome his opinions, his opinions must be informed by the reality faced by a large portion of the Jamaican population,” Morgan told the Jamaica Observer during an interview on Wednesday.

“We are not seeking to weaken local government, or to take away all the roads of local government. We are seeking to coordinate, we are seeking to regulate, we are seeking to set standards,” added Morgan.

He pointed out that under the One Road Authority there is no plan to move all roads to the control of the central government and argued that the initiative will provide greater clarity for stakeholders to be able to identify the agency to which each road belongs.

“We have to establish criteria as to the categorisation of roads and that’s something that we’re working with the World Bank on, to reclassify a lot of our roads because decades after the Main Roads Act was passed Jamaica has changed and evolved. So we have to set standards for what roads are. The people don’t know who is responsible for their roads. We have to fix that,” said Morgan.

The Main Roads Act 1932, last amended in 1985, governs the management, maintenance, and public use of Jamaica’s main road network, vesting control with the National Works Agency (NWA) to establish rules for road construction, public access, and penalties for road obstructions. The Act also sets procedures for new road development and funding mechanisms for the upkeep of roads.

According to Morgan, the new policy will standardise the way in which roads are built, managed and repaired as the current system leaves room for roadways to deteriorate without an authority to hold accountable.

“So a part of the One Road Authority would be to establish standards for all roads across the island, whether they be roads that are being done by private developers, whether they be roads that are being done by municipal corporations, whether they be roads that are being done by the National Works Agency. We’ll be able to publish to the public every single road, who is responsible for the road, the state of the road, and when the road is due to be repaired,” said Morgan.

He further argued that under the One Road Authority, municipal bodies will become more emboldened as it will give them more ways to hold accountable people who damage roads.

“I know that the mayor has been concerned about the destruction of road by cement trucks and people who are carrying aggregates, people who dump things on the road, and people who park vehicles on the road. So we will be meeting with the Minister of Local Government [Desmond McKenzie] and the mayor as well because once they see what we are planning to do, they will understand that we are actually empowering citizens and municipal authorities to give the people better service,” declared Morgan.

He added that the initiative is also aimed at reclassifying roadways, which he said will lessen the burden on local authorities and other agencies who are being tasked with managing roads that have evolved beyond their initial purpose.

“We need to work with our partners…and say to them, ‘some of the roads that you guys are managing, you don’t have the capacity to manage it because they are no longer community roads, they are now national roads’. So the plan is never to take away the roads from the parish councils but to reclassify them. So we have to make a decision, do we want the roads to be fixed or do we want to keep arguing over who is responsible for each road?” charged Morgan.

The works minister was responding to several criticisms from local government officials since the announcement of the planned One Road Regulatory Authority, with the latest salvo fired by Swaby during the monthly meeting of the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation on Tuesday.

Swaby argued that local authorities should not have their responsibilities stripped due to poorly managed repairs to community roads. He charged the issue of bad roads was not as a result of the inaction of the municipal corporation but because of inadequate funding from the Government.

The mayor further challenged the idea of totally nationalised roads, telling councillors that he was concerned that residents’ access to representatives responsible for road repair would be compromised if all roads were overseen by central government.

SWABY…local authorities should not have their responsibilities stripped due to poorly managed repairs to community roads