Portmore Boycott...

[Tuff Gong]

Re: Portmore Boycott...

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I want to answer a certain question raised in both these posts.
It is the argument that countries all over the world are doing this.

This is a very foolish, dishonest and spineless argument.
For one thing the GOJ did not have wide consultations with the people of Jamaica. Most of what were called consultations amounted to talks with small focus groups of yes men and two meeting that noisemakers such as TI/Farqh Institute/JFJ forced the GOJ into. At those meetings the reps of the developers and GOJ kept most of the details well hidden and painted a rosy picture of life after the new highways.

Another thing, there is tons of available information, including a recent World Bank Study that pointed to the fact that these Boondoggle projects are surest way to facilitate and mask corruption.

The HWay projects have led to massive overruns and fraud in Jamaica. Is that normal all over the world?
If this is so is that the example we want to follow?
The model of the local Hway has seen the GOJ giving foreigners’ road that Jamaica have borrowed huge sums of money to construct. Is this what is taking place all over the world. Should we accept that in Jamaica?

The toll to the Highway is tied in at least three ways to the USA Inflation Rate, really is this what happens all over the world?
Is this the matter we want to follow?

Imprisoning a Bedroom Community to collect Tolls, it that normal all over the world?

[/ QUOTE ]
you're overextrapolating a tad. my comment about other countries also using foreign companies for major projects was in answer to the issue that it was somehow out of the ordinary for the Jcan govt to decide to do so. it's not.

of course, you may have a point that the resulting process around the decision sucked. but the choice to have a foreign company do this is a separate thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

No I am not!

Prior to the 1990s weren't there bridges, roads, a least one causeway built in Jamaica, financed by any number of International Agencies and Loans.
Name one or any that was built and/or wholly owned by any outside Government(s), private individual or group of individuals?

[Butsiyah]

Re: Portmore Boycott...

Is there an offset between the cost of wear and tear and gasoline vs. the cost of the toll on the causeway? Does it make economic sense to travel the mandela highway vs. the toll road? Just asking [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70402-thinking.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70402-thinking.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70402-thinking.gif[/img]

[Tuff Gong]

Re: Portmore Boycott...

Tolling is not new in Jamaica.....neither is protest against same!

History takes its 'toll'
143 years later, Portmore continues the fight
By Sherilla Gordon Sunday Observer Writer
Sunday, July 16, 2006

MORE than 140 years have elapsed since Jamaica last imposed a toll on travellers, a period that was characterised by civil disobedience and periodic riots that eventually forced the cancellation of the road tax after 25 years.

A two-month boycott of the new Highway 2000 and its state of the art toll bridge, announced by residents of Portmore, St Catherine, seems tame by comparison to history.
The disobedience has got a lot more civil, with legal challenges in court and lobby groups advocating against the road fee.


Peasant farmers brought tolling to an end by smashing up the infrastructure.

There is little possibility that French firm TransJamaican Highway will gather up its 30 or so tolling booths in the face of letters of protest and residents' bombardment of talk shows.
The first tolling system was introduced in 1838 when a law was passed for the maintenance of Hope Road leading from Montgomery Corner to the junction of the Hope and Hog Hole Rivers in the upper reaches of St Andrew.

Montgomery Corner is the area now known as Cross Roads, the section of the capital considered the border between uptown and downtown Kingston.

The newly freed slaves paid tolls ranging from 5-10 pence on carriages, horses, mules, cattle, sheep, goat and pigs.
The system, however, was seen as a strategic ploy to make the cost of living so high that the peasants would give up their subsistence livelihoods and return to the plantations, re-establishing the status quo under slavery.
The toll was also implemented alongside a 12-fold increase in the cost of food and clothing.

According to a historian writing in Jamaica's oldest newspaper, The Gleaner, in 1966, other tolling systems were established on the roads leading to Savanna-la-Mar in Westmoreland, a building on Spanish Town Road near the Ferry River, Kingston, the archway by the old fort at Rockfort, Kingston and the location where the Matilda's Corner Police Station in Liguanea, St Andrew, now sits.

Another apparent tolling station was established at what is now known as Toll Gate, a community in Clarendon, and it is believed that this is how the district got its name.
Toll Gate, in those days, was a privately owned estate whose owners charged peasants who walked across their land.
In 1851, a Board of Commissioners of Highways and Bridges was appointed to take control and maintain the toll gates, as well as the highways they connected.

While the tolling system was strongly opposed from its introduction, the real test of its continuation, and the beginning of its demise, never came until February 1859.

Savanna-la-Mar, the capital of Westmoreland, became the centre of attention as the peasants decided that they were fed up altogether with it. Because of the toll locations along the roads leading to Savanna-la-Mar, they had to pay a toll for passage each time they fetched water, a basic necessity.

As reported in the Falmouth Post on March 4, 1859, they rioted for three nights after which the toll gates as well as the toll-keepers' houses were destroyed.
The riots spread to the rest of Westmoreland and continued from June to October.

Police from other parishes, including St James, Hanover, Trelawny and St Elizabeth, had to be deployed to Westmoreland to restore order.
They failed.

Nevertheless, some of the protestors were caught and although they stood trial, their supporters who turned out in large numbers at the proceedings, behaved in a boisterous manner, forcing the early adjournment of the cases.

In 1863, the same highway board of commissioners sold off the toll gates after a law abolishing tolling was passed.
It's unclear what the equivalent value of 5-10 pence would be today according to the present value of money.

But the $60 toll to use the new Portmore bridge is equivalent to 50 pence, based on to the value of the Jamaican dollar to the pound sterling at the close of trading on Kingston's foreign exchange market Friday (£1:J$121.15).

The toll bridge and its 23 booths officially opened for business Saturday, with much fanfare.
Other areas of Highway 2000, from Bushy Park to Vineyards, have been tolled since September 2003.

[email protected]

143 years later, Portmore continues the fight

[mountaingal]

Re: Portmore Boycott...

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I want to answer a certain question raised in both these posts.
It is the argument that countries all over the world are doing this.

This is a very foolish, dishonest and spineless argument.
For one thing the GOJ did not have wide consultations with the people of Jamaica. Most of what were called consultations amounted to talks with small focus groups of yes men and two meeting that noisemakers such as TI/Farqh Institute/JFJ forced the GOJ into. At those meetings the reps of the developers and GOJ kept most of the details well hidden and painted a rosy picture of life after the new highways.

Another thing, there is tons of available information, including a recent World Bank Study that pointed to the fact that these Boondoggle projects are surest way to facilitate and mask corruption.

The HWay projects have led to massive overruns and fraud in Jamaica. Is that normal all over the world?
If this is so is that the example we want to follow?
The model of the local Hway has seen the GOJ giving foreigners’ road that Jamaica have borrowed huge sums of money to construct. Is this what is taking place all over the world. Should we accept that in Jamaica?

The toll to the Highway is tied in at least three ways to the USA Inflation Rate, really is this what happens all over the world?
Is this the matter we want to follow?

Imprisoning a Bedroom Community to collect Tolls, it that normal all over the world?

[/ QUOTE ]
you're overextrapolating a tad. my comment about other countries also using foreign companies for major projects was in answer to the issue that it was somehow out of the ordinary for the Jcan govt to decide to do so. it's not.

of course, you may have a point that the resulting process around the decision sucked. but the choice to have a foreign company do this is a separate thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

No I am not!

Prior to the 1990s weren't there bridges, roads, a least one causeway built in Jamaica, financed by any number of International Agencies and Loans.
Name one or any that was built and/or wholly owned by any outside Government(s), private individual or group of individuals?

[/ QUOTE ]
regardless, the government decided at this time in its history, and for reasons perhaps having to do with modern conditions, to go with a foreign supplier for this particular infrastructure project. it is not unusual for this to happen. that's the point i am making, that you are ignoring.

[Hopyoneson]

Re: Portmore Boycott...

[ QUOTE ]
The newly freed slaves paid tolls ranging from 5-10 pence on carriages, horses, mules, cattle, sheep, goat and pigs.
The system, however, was seen as a strategic ploy to make the cost of living so high that the peasants would give up their subsistence livelihoods and return to the plantations, re-establishing the status quo under slavery.
The toll was also implemented alongside a 12-fold increase in the cost of food and clothing.

[/ QUOTE ]

So the blk politicians replace the yt coloninal overseers but not without borrowing them tactics, what is old is new. Dem tek brutality for love, or in this case development. Dem rob unu great great granny and dem a rob unu now, only difference is now you have cell phone a chat when unu visit the pit toilet and cockroach and rat a look pon unu behind [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70400-talktohand.gif[/img]. keep dem type of progress deh.

[Tuff Gong]

Re: Portmore Boycott...

[ QUOTE ]
regardless, the government decided at this time in its history, and for reasons perhaps having to do with modern conditions, to go with a foreign supplier for this particular infrastructure project. it is not unusual for this to happen. that's the point i am making, that you are ignoring.

[/ QUOTE ]
... but you are making a spurious arguments to fund a non-issue. At no time and at no place did I say a six-lane bridge, a toll road or construction in Jamaica is unprecedented.

Jamaica had toll roads before.
Jamaica had a causeway bridge in roughly the same area before.
Jamaica had highways before.
Jamaica had huge construction projects before.

According to Clifton Yap if the GOJ granted the same contractual goodies that are offered to Bouygues Travaux, then Jamaicans would have built this Bridge and the HWay Project.

[Seveen]

Re: Portmore Boycott...

reading - i wish this board had sound - nothing like a good reasoning [img]/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[mountaingal]

Re: Portmore Boycott...

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
regardless, the government decided at this time in its history, and for reasons perhaps having to do with modern conditions, to go with a foreign supplier for this particular infrastructure project. it is not unusual for this to happen. that's the point i am making, that you are ignoring.

[/ QUOTE ]
... but you are making a spurious arguments to fund a non-issue. At no time and at no place did I say a six-lane bridge, a toll road or construction in Jamaica is unprecedented.


[/ QUOTE ]
i did not say you said that.

[niceniss]

Re: Portmore Boycott...

[ QUOTE ]
reading - i wish this board had sound - nothing like a good reasoning [img]/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

ah, but you wouldnt want to hear my vioce. I'm much less boring in print and much too meek in person [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70388-shameonyou.gif[/img]

[mountaingal]

Re: Portmore Boycott...

Tuff Gong, i'm leaving to home soon. perhaps i missed why you think it was so wrong for the government to have a foreign agency construct this project. you clearly think Jamaica could have managed this particular infrastructure project (and i am not necessarily challenging you on this, although you seem to think i am) - why do you think it made a decision not to take it on itself?

i'll check for your reply when i reach home. also, looking forward to your excerpts from the contract.

[Seveen]

Re: Portmore Boycott...

i remember how long it took to build "the new road to Negril" - that went on forever - and then farrins did that road and whiiish you were in Negril in an hour

everytime i take the new road - i think about all the businesses that suffer - yes new businesses opened but . . . just change not necessarily increase

and the toll road also makes me think of Life and Debt

things are not always as the seem on the surface sometimes it is about the new don in town

safe trip (((MG)))
Donikka - meek [img]/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img] woulda never thought that from your signature [img]/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Seveen]

Re: Portmore Boycott...

and those new RUi hotels - rue [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70394-bawlout.gif[/img] the day

and those Sunset Hotels - 3 of them now - no JA owned - not even Mr Stewart [img]/forums/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif[/img]

but what we learned from 911 is that you can't take land or building home with you - in your pocket

so the roads are Jamaican, the hotels are Jamaican - it all ends up being a bad investment for some "other country" and the road is still in jamaica

[Tuff Gong]

Re: Portmore Boycott...

[ QUOTE ]
Tuff Gong, i'm leaving to home soon. perhaps i missed why you think it was so wrong for the government to have a foreign agency construct this project. you clearly think Jamaica could have managed this particular infrastructure project (and i am not necessarily challenging you on this, although you seem to think i am) - why do you think it made a decision not to take it on itself?

i'll check for your reply when i reach home. also, looking forward to your excerpts from the contract.

[/ QUOTE ]

I did not say that?

[Tuff Gong]

Re: Portmore Boycott...

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
regardless, the government decided at this time in its history, and for reasons perhaps having to do with modern conditions, to go with a foreign supplier for this particular infrastructure project. it is not unusual for this to happen. that's the point i am making, that you are ignoring.

[/ QUOTE ]
... but you are making a spurious arguments to fund a non-issue. At no time and at no place did I say a six-lane bridge, a toll road or construction in Jamaica is unprecedented.


[/ QUOTE ]
i did not say you said that.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are funny. You accuse me of turning away from a phantom point, I was merely trying to answer.

Jamaica is not averse to foreign technical help, foreign construction or even foreign ownership of property, but it would simply the matter if we keep the arguments locked on the Portmore Toll Issue and the Highway 2000 Project of which it is an integral part. No need to go into modern construction methodology and whether or not this is the time to build toll roads.

FYI Studies have proven time and time again that building a huge Highway Systems are inefficient ways to move and control traffic.
It is far better to maintain a system where at least a number of two lane divided road is networked with a system of well-maintained local roads, backed up by public an efficient transportation system.

Jamaica already had the makings of a very good network, we had the second largest road density in the world, complimented by Trains and small airdromes in locations all over the Island.

[Pepper]

Re: Portmore Boycott...

[ QUOTE ]
Is there an offset between the cost of wear and tear and gasoline vs. the cost of the toll on the causeway? Does it make economic sense to travel the mandela highway vs. the toll road? Just asking [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70402-thinking.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70402-thinking.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70402-thinking.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]\

No it does not make sense, with all the people on the boycott path, everybody a bun more gas, and wear down dem cyar. But sometimes yuh haffi suffah fi mek a point. Although the contract is already signed, so what can happen?