Whitehouse to Belmont road a maze of potholes
Published:Saturday | April 26, 2014 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
When Tessanne Chin blurted out on the popular talent show 'The Voice', that Jamaica had the worst roads, it spelled a major embarrassment for us and the National Works Agency (NWA). Senior representatives of the government body appeared on television soon after and explained that a lack of funding was to blame.
Allan Magnus, a popular radio personality, journeyed to the western end of the island on the Easter weekend and discovered what most of us who travel that way regularly knew all along. The road between Whitehouse and Belmont is treacherous and hazardous. Negotiating it is tantamount to driving through a minefield.
Many sections of the road have no asphalt and large craters have developed. Nearby is the Sandals Whitehouse property that offers employment to hundreds.
I appeal to Mr Stephen Shaw, communications manager for the NWA, this is an emergency.
No one is telling us why the road was dug up and left in this condition. Did the project run out of money? How long before work is restarted? Where is the member of parliament?
The recommended bypass - a right turn slightly after passing Sandals Whitehouse - is narrow, and sections of that road are breaking away. Because of the now-frequent use, it is developing potholes and also becoming perilous.
This is one reason why it is impossible for us to accept that taxing down to our withdrawals at banks makes sense. The decisions being made by our leaders do not enhance confidence in how our money is being spent.
We still have the slowest average growth rate in the Americas, behind even earthquake-ravished Haiti. We've run fiscal deficits for most of our nearly 52 years of Independence. Only around 3,000 of the country's 62,000 registered businesses pay taxes. Not even Dr Damien King, the head of the University of the West Indies Economics Department, can convince us that there are alternatives. Our savings are all that we have left, and taxing it is cruel and inhumane.
MARK CLARKE
Siloah PO, St Elizabeth