Attorney General and St Joseph MP Dale Marshall is pushing back against claims circulating online that another bridge in the parish has collapsed, clarifying that the incident at Branchbury involves a damaged retaining wall.
Marshall, who visited the site on Sunday, said the wall gave way after hours of heavy rain.
“There have been a number of reports that have hit social media and other places that yet another bridge has collapsed or given away in St Joseph. This is actually not the case,” he stressed. “What has happened is that a retaining wall, which supports one side of the road, has in part failed because of the very heavy rains we experienced today.”
He noted that the Ministry of Transport and Works (MTW) has already installed warning signs and barricades, and engineering teams will begin assessments first thing Monday morning.
““They’ll be there first thing tomorrow morning to erect proper hoarding and to come up with a fairly urgent solution,” Marshall said.
“It is being treated as an absolute priority of the Ministry of Public Works,” he added. “I’ll be following up with them on a day-to-day basis to ensure that it is resolved fairly quickly.”
With Laynes Bridge, Airy Hill Bottom and Melvin Hill Bridge also out of service, Marshall acknowledged the ongoing pressure on the parish’s ageing road network.
“There’s no doubt that the road network in St. Joseph has been under a tremendous amount of stress. Years, decades really of little or no maintenance. The difficulties that we have with very old roads that were made to carry far fewer vehicles, far later vehicles. And then we add to that the problem of slippage and the fact that a lot of our roads in the constituency are built on clay or clay soils. ,” he said. “So when you add all these things together, you really have a problem of huge proportions. ”
Marshall said several major road projects are underway or recently completed, part of a wider infrastructural push supported by a $230 million loan from China. (AM)
