BOGUE DELAY

MONTEGO BAY, St James -- MOTORISTS will have to put up with the headaches of the Bogue main road longer than anticipated, as the $1.4 billion upgrade work being undertaken by Surrey Paving and Aggregates Ltd, in a bid to ease traffic congestion, will miss next month's completion date.

   "The contractors have had challenges with sourcing base material and there was a period of heavy rainfall in the area, so those factors have caused us to push back the deadline," said Stephen Shaw, the communications manager at the National Works Agency.
   Work on the roadway began almost a year ago following the signing of a contract by the Ministry of Transport and Works.
   The work, which involved the reconstruction of the Bogue main road to accommodate four-lane traffic from Reading to Fairfield and the upgrading of sections of Long Hill as well as the Fairfield intersection, through West Green unto Howard Cooke Boulevard, was scheduled to last 12 months.
   On Tuesday, Shaw told the Western Mirror that the project was between 65 and 70 per cent complete.
   "The bulk of the drainage work has been done; some sections of the roads have been paved," Shaw said, adding that the approaches to some of the bridges under the project have been completed.
   Major traffic jams along the Bogue road, the main thoroughfare that carries traffic in and out of the city via the south coast to and from the parishes of Hanover, Westmoreland and St Elizabeth into Montego Bay, St James have long been the source of distress to the motoring public of western Jamaica.