Project Status

Even with the project stalled, stopped on the shoulder, transmission in park, headlights dimmed, emergency brake engaged, the one working indicator flashing, bonnet raised, white rag tied to the car pole, left front tire nothing but scattered steel belts since he drove the damn thing for the last seventeen kilometers on a flat, rim destroyed, no spare, out of washer fluid, driver leaning on the fender sucking his last Marlboro down to the filter, pissed off passengers sitting on the right-of-way fence having spent the last two hours unsuccessfully trying to flag down a ride while continually deriding the jerk of an operator who swore he had a good spare in the boot, twenty-three kilometers from the nearest town, sun is going down and everybody is tired and hungry,... we are still hosting weekly progress meetings with the Contractor.

Of course, after a couple of months of idleness, there is no progress on which to report. We go through the motions, though, and the meetings give us regular opportunities to admonish what is left of the Korean project staff.

They kept a few employees here, to tidy up particularly messy areas, and to perform some remedial work. I have noticed that one of the Mr. Lees (“Bridge Lee”) is starting to look particularly shaggy, so I imagine that one of the Koreans to leave the island for home was the man who doubled as the barber. Besides Lee, there are three Indians and one more Korean, two Jamaicans in the office, and two Jamaicans as domestic help. Hardly enough to construct a seventy-one kilometer roadway project.

Not even enough to explain why they have stopped work.

Through this period, we have been trying to keep our staff busy with what little work we can invent, so that we do not have to lay them off and rehire them later. As such, they do very little, never quite completing an assigned task. To complete your work could make you redundant, so the fear of losing one’s job actually slows down the output. This is so anti-Capitalist.

Meanwhile, the government refuses to terminate the contractor. Sure, such action would be an annoyance, even politically unpopular, but I see no way that the Koreans will complete the work, even if we succumb to their ludicrous demands. Their first offer was to complete one quarter of the project length for a sum equal to the contracted amount to complete the entire project. In addition, they want immediate payment for all claims (real and imagined, documented or not) against the project equal to five times what any reasonable person could justify. Plus, they want half of this before they will even come to the negotiating table. As a result, we have a frustration surplus here of ample quantity to supply the needs of the entire Caricom.
Solution? We spent Sunday at an all-inclusive in Negril, adding shots of dark rum to the children’s drink menu while relaxing at the swim-up bar. Try the Boo Boo Special - orange juice, pineapple juice, strawberry syrup. Then add rum and a lime. Yum. Actually, I was already making these at home. Who would have thought that the pickneys would be drinking them too, sans rum and lime?

Now that you are beveraged,...

Dave has been down here for a spell. He has decided to call Jamaica the “Land of the Unfinished Concrete Shell”. And why not?

As you drive around the island, you notice numerous houses apparently under construction. Typically, the site will have been cleared, and the shell of the building will be erected and roofed. The exterior and interior walls of these houses are made of concrete block, occasionally reinforced and filled with concrete, then plastered with a cement grout. Utility services and conduits, all of thin walled PVC, are cast into the blockwork, to be sheared by any future differential settlement to which the house may someday be subjected. Once a concrete roof is in place, construction stops. The unfinished concrete shell can remain in place for years, until such time as the owner saves enough money to complete the project.
Jamaica is a poor country. Plagued by massive unemployment of the unemployable and fiscally irresponsible leadership. Any money that is available to lend is sold at usurious interest rates. To secure a mortgage when the cost of money is high and little likelihood that you will be employed next year is foolish anywhere, so Jamaicans build what they can when they can. It appears to me that the commitment to finish the project, er,.. house will not be made until the homeowner has the funds in pocket to complete the work.

If he were to come back with money enough to install just the fixtures, they would be stolen. Maybe just the windows? They would be stolen. Iron bars? Stolen. To secure the building, the homeowner must install fixtures, windows, iron bars, and whatever else is required to make the place livable, so that he can move in and guard his castle from the inside. I suppose he could hire someone to guard fixtures, windows, and iron bars, but what is to stop the guard from going halvsies with the t’iefs?

These half completed houses are everywhere. Combine them with the shells of structures abandoned after Gilbert hit in ‘88, and Dave may have stumbled across this month’s analogy. Let us beat on this dead horse and see who salutes. M’kay?
Lessee. The houses are the roadway, right? The houses are not done, and the road is not done either. In the end, nobody will care. Was it Dick Van Patton or Robert Fripp who said, “In the way that that it is that way that it is the way that it is.” Probably Fripp. This is Jamaica. Everyt’ing is everyt’ing. Analogy complete.
The glass half empty side of me agrees that nobody will care. Nobody will act.

There will be much talk, high level meetings, maybe some public demonstrations, but little direct action. To complete the project with the current contractor requires a contractor who wants to complete the project. We do not have that. They are bankrupt. Everybody knows that they are bankrupt, yet talks continue as if, somehow, the Contractor will find the capital to continue with the works. Ain’t gonna happen. At least, not that simply.

Option two - retender. This would involve finding someone else to complete the work. This would involve funding someone else to complete the work. This island will never see The Contractor’s low low crazy Earl prices again, nor can they extend their Japanese loan forever. Hence, the Jamaicans would need another boatload of cash. Ain’t gonna happen. At least, not that easily.

This road could be another unfinished concrete shell.

The glass half full guy knows that this will all change tomorrow.