Groundbreaking and Project Tour: Munroe Road to Seaview Avenue, St Andrew
Keynote Address
By
Dr the Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
At the
Groundbreaking and Project Tour: Munroe Road to Seaview Avenue, St Andrew
On
May 14, 2025
Allow me to acknowledge your Members of Parliament who are here.
Your Minister of Finance, the Honourable Fayval Williams and Mr Julian Robinson.
Effectively, Minister Samuda does all the work. I guide him and I really don’t take any credit for the things he has managed to achieve because I find him to be very passionate about the subject area. He almost takes it personally, certainly on the environmental side and on the water side so I know that very shortly, very soon, you will have maybe a different title that reflects the responsibility that he takes for the portfolio.
We have a Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation because it is important to bring all the elements of development together under one roof because development means coordination. You can’t have development when things are complicated, but you can have development in complex systems. And if you’re talking about development, you’re talking about water, potable water, you’re talking about sewage, you’re talking about electricity, you’re talking about roads and transportation, you’re talking about healthcare, you’re talking about security, you’re talking about education, so you see the complex nature of development.
The strategy of this administration was to bring all the elements of physical development under one roof, so we have water, we have roads, we have environmental considerations; all of them fall under the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation. The benefit of this from a practical standpoint for what citizens would experience, is that we are not going to lay a new road and then a month after we come and dig it up because the development planning is taking into consideration the road budget, the water budget, and the sewer budget, and we are able then to align procurement, align the public investment process so that everything takes place in a coordinated way and so what you are seeing here is a coordinated development strategy.
Now, there’s another area that we have to coordinate with, and that is housing. I know we are in the season where many offers are going to be made about how we are going to solve Jamaica’s housing challenges, and there are many ideas. Some are good ideas, some are workable, but not every workable idea means that it should be done or can be done.
Ultimately, you have to look at cost. What does it cost? Can you afford it? And is there a better way to achieve the same results? But more than that, regardless of the differing ideas and proposals about housing, there are some things that you cannot escape that you must do. Any commitment about how many houses you’re going to be building or how many houses you think you can build must come back to where is the water coming from?
No housing proposal is credible unless you are able to answer the question about water. No housing proposal is credible unless you are able to answer the question about sewage disposal. So yes, there will be all kinds of lovely sounding plans about housing, but it is this administration that is doing the hard work, the necessary work to ensure that you can actually have the platform on which to build houses. It is this administration that is putting in the water and the sewage to unlock the value and potential in lands on which you can then go and build houses.
I just thought I would point that out as everyone is running away in fantasy land about what kinds of houses and how many houses can be built. Now, this project is designed to provide sewage, a sewer network to connect into sewer networks that we have already built. For example, the sewer of Mona and Seaview and Retreat- 6.6 kilometers of sewer network, which will dramatically improve sewage collection in probably some of the most valuable real estate in Kingston.
But not only that, this project will replace old sewer mains, which some of them laid more than 60 years ago with material that we are not using today anymore, calcified, broken, and you can’t get reliable water pressure through them. In total, we will be spending somewhere in the region of about 1.1 or 1.2 billion Jamaican dollars on this project, and I want to depart there for a moment to make another point to the public.
As I was driving to this event and listening to the radio station, there was a call from a community. I didn’t get the name of the community specifically, but I believe that the community would’ve been in St James, maybe East Central St James. And the caller was complaining that there is no water in his community, and I thought that it was ironic. I’m on my way to break ground for a major water project and there is a call at another end of the island for a community that is without water, and that is the nature of the challenge that we face, and I want to make the point again, as I have done over and over again.
Even if we had a trillion dollars to spend on water, we could not all at once provide every single community with water. I believe that point has to be made because as I listened yesterday to a political aspirant speak about the situation in Jamaica where he was not able to deny that the country is in a better state financially, and that we have the resources, not being able to contest that his next retort was how does that translate into benefits for the people? Yes, the economy doing good. Yes, your debt gone down, but can it nyam? How does it translate into alleviating the pressures that you are facing today?
And because there is always a lag time, it’s just a practical issue, even if we had all the resources, we still couldn’t deliver all the water you want because it takes time. And the time it takes is not just we impose it, it is the citizens that require us to go through several processes to ensure that your money is properly spent. The average water project would take about six months to a year to be done. So, between whenever the project is conceived and you actually turn your pipe and get water, you’re looking at between six months to a year average; I see Garth telling me it’s probably longer, but on top of that, there are some other processes as well.
Gone are the days where politicians and technocrats just get up and say we’re going to do a water project. Nowadays, there is a process called the Public Investment Appraisal because there are technocrats and politicians all over advocating for their projects so you have projects in health, you have projects in education, projects in water, the NWA has projects; all kinds of projects, and the government used to just spend, and you didn’t get the best value out of the spend because the expenditure was not coordinated from a single logical outlook
Now, every project is appraised so we look at can the project be actually implemented now. So, you line up all the projects based upon their timeline for implementation. Then you look at what is the opportunity cost. If I did this project and I get X value versus doing another project where the value is two times x, meaning I get a greater value, which project do I do first? So, we have a more coordinated system and that takes time.
Then after we pass that, we go to procurement to ensure it’s not friend and company get the contract to actually do the work. And procurement, I would like to say it could take six months, but in practice procurement is sometimes even longer than the execution of the project itself so you’re looking at an average maybe a year to a year and a half.
And when you go through that, then you actually break ground and start the work. And then all kind of problems can happen when you start work. Sometimes you have rain, sometimes you have theft on the site. Sometimes you have industrial dispute, and that can drag out so the point I’m making is that for those people who can’t contest on the government’s economic performance and the creation of the resources who are seeking now to contest on the point that, well, you have the resources, but you’re not converting it into benefits, don’t be misled by that falsehood because they can’t do it any faster either. And worse of all, if they were there, they would’ve destroyed the revenues to actually create the the work.
So I want you to be clear that as citizens, yes, this administration and your prime Minister will never say to you that your call for water is not valid. That gentleman who called in on this radio station earlier today about the water in his community, I’m glad you called in so that I’m aware of it. I want to know about it, but don’t believe in your mind that it is an intentional neglect on the part of the government that we don’t give you water.
Your frustration with not having water in your pipe is valid, and I understand, and I respect that frustration, and I’m going to do everything in my power to reach to you. But as a citizen, you also have a duty to understand that there is a process and what you must take comfort in and what you must hold your government to account is one, are you creating the revenues to be able to fix my problem? Because if there are no revenues, it is only a wish that your problem is going to be fixed. So, once you see your economy is doing well, you go on one foot on the ladder of hope. Secondly, is there a process by which the revenues that is earned in the country will be properly spent?
And if the answer to that in your mind is yes, which it is, then you go up one more step on the rung, on the Ladder of Hope. And then the third thing, is there a programme that is properly designed to deliver water? And I can tell you yes, there is such a programme. Yes, every week, minister Samuda or myself is out opening, commissioning, turning on because in the very constituency that this caller was complaining from, and I hear the call, caller when I go back to my office with Minister Samuda, I’m gonna look at it and see what we can do to accelerate the pace of delivery there. But in that very constituency in Rhine Park, just a few weeks before we turned on a major water supply project which will help to improve water conditions in that general area.
So, my friends there is hope and very shortly you may very well be seeing water in your community based upon the improvements that have been done to water supply in that area. But there is another challenge too, which citizens should be aware of as you contemplate who is best to deliver the services that you need.
Water supply and water infrastructure requires consistent and regular investment. In our minds, we believe that once the sewer pipe is put down and once the water pipe is put down, that’s it, it’s there forever and you will have water running forever. Indeed, I can understand why that may very well be the perception because for several decades, having expanded our water supply systems and run pipes, we did not have a systematic programme of reinvesting in maintaining those sewer lines.
And what has happened over many decades is that the infrastructure has aged. That’s a big problem because for almost four decades of poor economic performance, we did not have the budgets to be consistently repairing and replacing water means sewer pipes, treatment systems, catchments and so they deteriorated, and they degraded just by the effluxion of time.
But in addition to that, our population has grown, standards and expectations have improved, and the systems that are aging simply cannot carry the demands that are on them. So if you are asking why do i have water problems now, well, it’s because for 40 years nobody fixed it. The gentleman who called and complained, if you were to ask him how long it has been that your community didn’t have water, and he will probably tell you that it has been that way from more than 30 years, or they have never had water before. That’s the reality.
This administration is the administration that is changing how things have been. And I want you to appreciate this point because in 2014 the NWC projected to spend from its capital budget 376.95 million Jamaican dollars, that would be for the entire island. The year before, they would’ve projected to spend 348.65 billion Jamaican dollars for the entire island.
You recall what I said we’re going to spend just on this one project alone, almost 1.1 billion Jamaican dollars. I want you to understand that you can’t compare the NWC under my administration to the NWC under the previous administration. Granted, this is what they projected to spend in those years, but in previous years they would’ve projected but they wouldn’t have been able to spend everything that they had projected because they just couldn’t implement. So, they had 3 billion dollars of projects that they have on the book, but they simply didn’t spend the money on the 3 billion dollars.
Now, for us, I just wanted to quickly tell you what our projections look like and what it is that we have been doing. In 2023/ 2024, the NWC was spending approximately 7.43 billion dollars; that’s what we projected to spend there, and we probably came close to that. And of course, we had accumulated about $5 billion dollars of investments up to then.
In the 2025/ 2026 budget, that is now, we are projected to spend 10.67 billion dollars of new works, not works piling up, but new works, so we are more than increasing several folds what was spent before. And it is important that the public understands that, that if you want to see water come to your community that is not there, this is the figure that you need to hear. How fast is the government allocating resources and using them? And it is clear that this administration has increased the capital allocation to water in the NWC’s budget several times over, so it means that the pace of bringing water to your community has increased, that’s it
What we are here today doing could not have been done under the previous administration. It is this administration that has managed the economy well, that is creating the resources following the process so that you can have an economy that generates the revenue so that you can have water to drink. So yes, the economy both can nyam and it can drink.
So, don’t follow that foolishness about, yes, the economy doing well but people still suffering. That is a reality that we know, but when this project is done, less people will be suffering. When we turn on the water in Rhine Park, less people are suffering. When I go up to Castleton and we commission that project, less people up there will be suffering. So yes, there have been a lot of suffering and a lot of people were suffering but it is this administration project by project, commissioning by commissioning, house by house, hospital by hospital, school room by school room, police station by police; it is this administration that is reducing the suffering of the people of Jamaica, and we are going to increase the pace in the third term even faster.
So that is why in a few days’ time, we will be doing the Western Resilience Pipeline Project and that is the installation of 29 kilometres of new pipeline- some big pipeline, they’re three feet wide in terms of diameter, and that will ensure that the western end of the island from Lucea to Negril will have resilient, reliable, and consistent water supply. Lucea, Falmouth, Montego Bay; all of those areas will benefit. We’re doing the Washington Boulevard Pipeline replacement. We’re doing the Ferry to Rock Pond upgrade, and we have started the long talked about but just never been able to do it, this administration is now doing the water project in Content where we will be bringing water from the Rio Cobre, treated and then distributed to our network in St Catherine and in Kingston.
A lot is happening in water much more than has ever happened before. Yes, it’ll take some time to reach to every community, but this administration is increasing the pace. This administration has the programme with the endurance, so I urge you, keep faith, keep hopeful.
As I said in another presentation, there are those who look at the glass of life and they say it is half empty but that is a matter of perspective. The glass is half empty if you are looking to the bottom of the glass, if you take a negative outlook but if you think my glass is half full, you’re looking up to the top, you are being positive in your outlook, and I urge all Jamaicans to take a positive outlook in life. What you put out in the environment, the energy that you put out is the energy that you receive so I urge my Jamaicans to be positive about Jamaica, to choose Jamaica.
This project will bring reliable water supply to the area. It will improve sewage disposal. It will protect our environment. It will create more opportunities for housing for our young people. It will create more jobs as a result, and indeed it will increase the welfare of all Jamaicans. I thank you for listening and God bless you.