Central Westmoreland MP Dwayne Vaz, whose constituency shares the devastated Cave to Kentucky road with Eastern Westmoreland MP Dr Dayton Campbell, is directly challenging Minister of Works Robert Nesta Morgan to stop deflecting and accept responsibility for a SPARK Programme that was fatally underfunded from the moment it was announced. Vaz, joined by Opposition Spokesman on Roads and Works Richard Azan, says Morgan’s attempt to blame MPs for the programme’s failure is not only dishonest, it is also contradicted by the National Works Agency’s own documents.

Those documents show that Eastern Westmoreland’s 10 approved SPARK roads carry a total estimated cost of $1.02 billion. The Government’s allocation to the constituency is $306 million a shortfall of $714 million. The Cave to Kentucky road alone is estimated at $175 million. Not one metre of it has been repaired since Hurricane Melissa devastated the corridor. The Government promised 10 roads per constituency. The budget never existed to deliver them. Now today, he claims all 10 roads (of which Cave to Kentucky is listed) will be fixed. So, fix it! 

“Minister Morgan wants to blame MPs for making choices, but the only reason any MP would have had to choose is that this Government committed to 10 roads and allocated money that could only do a few.  Make the proper allocation and every road gets done. Until then, Nesta Morgan owns this failure entirely,” said Vaz.

“The NWA’s own CEO admitted to Parliament that roads were selected before anyone calculated the cost. That is not responsible programme management, that is a broken promise dressed in a press release. Minister Morgan has been an abject failure in this role, and no amount of spin changes the fact that communities across the island are still waiting, still protesting, and still without a road,” said Azan.

Both MPs are demanding the Government immediately fund all 10 roads per constituency as originally committed, deploy emergency works to Hurricane Melissa-affected roads without further delay, and cease what they describe as a pattern of blame-shifting that has become the defining characteristic of Minister Morgan’s tenure.