$130 million Spring Village bridge construction to begin shortly, says Warmington

The bridge will be built at a cost of $130 million with the Jamaica Broilers Group contributing $50 million towards the budget, Warmington revealed during his Sectoral Presentation in the House of Representative yesterday.

In September 2022, the Spring Village Bridge was ordered closed by the National Works Agency following an inspection of the infrastructure.

Since then commuters have to be dealing with the inconvenience of using alternate route that is not only longer but less conducive for the motoring public and business operators – the Jamaica Broilers Group’s Best Dressed Chicken processing factory the most impacted.

“The president (Christopher Levy) of Jamaica Broilers just WhatsApp me expressing concerns and the difficulty they are experiencing,” Warmington said as he went off script to explain the situation in his constituency.

“The Jamaica Broilers have more than 400 vehicles per day going to the production plant in Spring Village,” he continued. “Jamaica Broilers last year put up $50 million to assist with the construction of that bridge. We have gratefully accepted but they are impatient to get it done.”

The bridge in Spring Village is among 32 such structures that the government has earmarked for rehabilitation over the next two years at a cost of $4 billion, stated the longserving MP who is the state minister for works in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation headed by Prime Minister Andrew Holness.

“We have in the budget $70 million under recurrent expenditure for bridges. I want to advise the people of Spring Village and I want to advise Jamaica Broilers and this house (Parliament) that I am committing that $70 million along with the $50 million from Jamaica Broilers to commence construction of the Spring Village bridge almost immediately,” he added. “So we won’t need the PIAB to review this based on the fact that we have $70 million as recurrent and Jamaica Broilers providing $50 million we can move forthwith to do that bridge.”

According to the Ministry of Finance website, the the Public Investment Appraisal Branch (PIAB) is the single point of entry for all projects intended for the public investment programme (PSIP). It is responsible for pre-investment project appraisals within the public investment management system (PIMS) and performs a technical advisory function to the public investment management committee (PIMC).

Warmington told the parliament that there are more than 800 bridges across the island in poor condition.

Details of the project are yet to be made public, but given that the Jamaica Broilers Group is footing 38 percent of the construction bill they will likely have a say in how the bridge is design and constructed.

In 2014 the Jamaica Broilers Group engaged the Government of Jamaica in a public/private partnership to rehabilitate a section of the roadway from the entrance of the Spring Village community to Gutters Square.

At that time a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed between both parties with the Jamaica Broilers Group employing engineers to ensure that the roadway was constructed to specifications as agreed.

The move was hailed as a masterstroke by the public in terms of quality and value for money. To date the roadway remains of the finest secondary roads in the constituency and is undoubtedly one of the best of its type in the country.