Editorial | Infrastructure failure calls for committee hearings

The debate over the Government’s wrenching the chairmanship of most parliamentary committees from the Opposition has gone noticeably quiet. Which is, perhaps, what Prime Minister Andrew Holness expected, or hoped for – another Jamaican nine-day wonder.

This newspaper, however, continues to insist that the upending of the convention started by a previous Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) prime minister, Bruce Golding, be inimical to the reality and perception of good governance, including the responsibility of the legislature to hold the executive to account. Indeed, current circumstances underline the need for that oversight, which is likely to be more robust when the leaders of the process aren’t beholden to the governing party.

For several days, up to a week ago, Jamaica was pummelled by showers from a slow-moving weather system that eventually became Hurricane Zeta. The rains caused widespread flooding, landslides, and significant damage to infrastructure, especially roads and drains.

Last Tuesday, Prime Minister Holness told Parliament that the preliminary cost of the damage was more than J$2 billion, but suggested that this sum would be largely to do the basics to ensure accessibility to various communities in the island. “This $2 billion will cover what would be needed, for example, to clear the [Bog Walk] Gorge of the roadways that would have been made impassable and to undertake [cleaning] of drains and gullies, and so forth,” Mr Holness said. Separately, an assessment was being done of the damage to parochial roads, which are the responsibility of the municipal authorities.

What surprises and concerns Jamaicans is not the inadequacy of the national infrastructure, but the deficiencies of the relatively recently built ones. It doesn’t require the most intense weather events, it seems, for them to buckle.

Indeed, across the island, even before Zeta, still new roads and highways, built at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, were badly scoured. Their damage was worsened by the recent storm. Some projects ­– such as with the Junction, the mountain road to the eastern parish of St Mary – despite their ever-rising costs, appear to be undeliverable.

LITTLE VALUE FOR MONEY

Put another way, taxpayers, on the face of it, get little value for money. They, in the circumstances, have cause to demand an accounting from the project overseers and engineers who design and build the roads and other brittle infrastructure. The process is impatient for oversight, which is of greater urgency given the country’s recent, and continuing, spending on expensive, and no doubt necessary, highways. These are financed with borrowed money.

The place to which we ought to default for oversight is Parliament, and in this case, its infrastructure and physical development committee, the leadership of which, since the September 3 general election, is with St James Central MP Heroy Clarke. He is of Prime Minister Holness’ JLP.

Mr Clarke, if he hasn’t already done so, should be convening meetings of his committee, to undertake a fulsome review of all the major infrastructure projects the Government has undertaken in recent years. He should be delving into the matter of the design capability of the infrastructure, their cost, whether the price has escalated, their expected lifespan and their performance to date.

Mr Clarke’s committee, in that situation, would need to question ministers, technocrats, contractors, as well as seek expert opinion from independent engineers on why recently built infrastructure seem to fail so quickly, when those delivered decades ago last, despite being built in an era of presumably inferior technology. For this perspective, we would suggest the Parliament calls on the retired engineer, John Allgrove, who was involved in many of Jamaica’s major civil projects and has remained publicly engaged on engineering and development issues.

While Mr Clarke can grab the authority to convene these sessions, if the matter isn’t sent to his committee by a resolution of Parliament, it would be best if he, or any member of the governing party, does not chair the committee. They will be placed in the unaccustomed, and, in the context of Jamaican politics, invidious position of being asked to hold an administration of which he is a part to account. Mr Clarke should recommend that the hearings be held but appeal to Prime Minister Holness to reverse himself and cede the chairmanship of this, and the other committees, to opposition members. He should do so publicly.