(Jamaica Observer) A mere four months after pulling the brakes on the partially revived passenger rail service due to the fact that it was swimming in red ink, the Government last week insisted that it would be resurrected during the Administration’s current term in office.
“This administration is actively pursuing the resuscitation of the railway,” Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips told Parliament last Tuesday, while seeking the House’s approval for the completion of the North-South Link of Highway 2000 by the National Road Operating and Constructing Company Limited.
According to Dr Phillips, the Cabinet, on the advice of the Ministry of Transport and Works, has established an Enterprise Team to oversee this process.
“It (Enterprise Team) is moving full speed ahead to entertain requests for proposals and consider these requests, and we expect a railway operation in the future of this country and indeed in the future of this Administration,” the finance minister said.
The statement comes in the wake of the Government’s decision in August to end the passenger rail service that was reintroduced in 2011 under the Jamaica Labour Party Administration.
The service, the current Government said, proving to be a drain on the finances of the transport and works ministry, which heavily subsidised the operations.
Earlier this year, Mike Henry, the transport and works minister in the former JLP Administration, had warned the current Government not to turn its back on the railway system which, he said, was critical to the country’s development.
“Let us hope to God that we don’t think it is not viable or important in the development of the country, as no modern world develops without the railway system,” Henry told the Jamaica Observer in an interview.
His warning came after an announcement by the transport ministry that the passenger train service, which operated between Spanish Town and Charlemont via Linstead, would be terminated on August 21.
Partial rail service was reintroduced to Jamaica by Henry in April 2011, after being dormant for 19 years, to facilitate commuters during the closure of the Bog Walk Gorge and to minimise disruption of pipe-laying by the National Water Commission.
However, the ministry’s current leadership said that with the works completed and the gorge reopened, the service had proven to be uneconomical.
Transport Minister Omar Davies told the Observer then that the rail service had been operating at a monthly loss of J$2.5 million and, as a result, would be privatised as the Government does not have the resources to keep it afloat. He said the Enterprise Team was set up to explore privatisation.
