FCJ Ribbon Cutting Ceremony: Morant Bay Urban Centre
Keynote Address
By
Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
At
FCJ Ribbon Cutting Ceremony: New Urban Centre
Morant Bay, St Thomas
On
May 15, 2025
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First, let me start off by giving thanks to God who has made this day possible, and we give God thanks for the showers of blessings that he has rained on us. We are not dry-weather people. We are resilient people, and we know that God is pleased with what we have done here today.
Allow me to thank those who have mastered the ceremony so far, and allow me as well to acknowledge Mr Fenton Ferguson, representing the leader of the opposition.
The Members of my Cabinet who are here. So many of them are here, I could convene a cabinet meeting.
His Excellency the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China, Chen Daojiang. And here I must mention the special effort and support of the Chinese government and China Harbour Engineering Company who played a critical role in this development.
I must especially acknowledge the Members of Parliament who also played a critical liaison role in ensuring that the project went off seamlessly: MP James Robertson for Western St Thomas and Dr Michelle Charles for Eastern St Thomas
Allow me as well to acknowledge our Custos the Honourable Norma Walters and Custos Marcia Bennett.
Allow me to acknowledge our Mayor, Councillor Louis Chin, Mayor of Morant Bay.
Now what can I say about the Honourable ‘Big-ton’ Shirley because it is no more Lyttleton anymore. The Chairman of the Factories Corporation was taken on this project, not just for his own professional duty, but he has taken it on as a passion project. This is something that he really wanted to see done and I commend you Tanny for the effort that you have put in.
Mr Angus Young, the Chief Executive Officer of the National Commercial Bank Capital Markets Limited for your partnership in this project,
Mr Dangran Bi, Country manager of China Harbour Engineering Company,
And all the clients and stakeholders of the Morant Bay Urban Centre but most of all I want to thank each and every one of you here who has come to witness this moment in history.
I want to thank the people of St Thomas for your patience, for your long-suffering and your endurance. Today we definitively close the chapter of decades of underdevelopment, disinvestment, infrastructural neglect that have long defined a narrative of St Thomas being the forgotten parish.
Today, we emphatically declare that St Thomas is firmly on the path for the fulfilment of its true vision of a prosperous growing, fair and equitable society. Today is 160 years since the Morant Bay Rebellion. For many, there is an expectation that for the wrongs that were done to us and our forebearers and our ancestors that there must be reparations, and I believe that there must be reparations and eventually, inevitably there will be reparations.
We must keep up the fight for reparations, but I also believe that the duty of reparations does not only lie on the generations that follow the wrong in the sense that the generations of those who committed the wrong should right the wrongs of their forebearers.
It is also incumbent on the generations of the victims to also in their own actions, in their own achievements, in the decisions they make to right the wrongs that were visited upon their forbearers. In other words, whilst I believe that there must be reparations, I am not going to wait on it. I believe that I have the strength and vigour of my mind and body. I believe I have the agency, meaning the independence to act in my own interest, and I believe I have equal or even greater intellect to use whatever little resources I have to correct the wrongs that were visited on my forebearers so that my children coming won’t have to suffer the indignity and the wrongs. And it is in doing that, that you are able to stand up as equal to those who have done you wrong in the past to say regardless of what you have done to me, see, I have made good with my own two hands. I have pulled myself up from the bootstraps. I have stood up against obstacles and I have overcome.
Today is a day when the people of St Thomas can say we are overcoming 160 years of wrongs and neglect, and we are doing it off and by ourselves with our own resources; that is what it means my people to be independent. I am not an ideologue. I don’t believe in any form of ideology other than what makes sense, other than what works, other than what is practical, other than what is fair and I have conducted myself as your leader in that regard.
A decade ago at a church in this parish, I hosted a town hall meeting called Prosperity Live. Some of you here may have been in that church hall, and a young lady stood up and she said, and I’m paraphrasing her, St Thomas needs development. For too long, we have neglected the parish, and she used certain examples to demonstrate the neglect. I’ll never forget it, she said, St Thomas is the only parish that doesn’t have a stoplight. And then she went on to say St Thomas doesn’t even have a KFC.
Now, I am going to send a bill for promotion to KFC because of the amount of time that they have been mentioned here, but you get the point that the people of St Thomas wanted to see the signs of modernity in their parish. Ten years later, I’m able to stand there and say, St Thomas, I did not forget you. St Thomas, you are now at the cutting edge, the frontier of new developments in Jamaica.
Ground was broken in 2019, but the plan was actually conceived in 2017, and I recall distinctly when we broke ground, there were those disbelievers as there always are persons who are sceptical that said it wouldn’t happen. There were those who probably secretly wanted it not to happen, but by God’s will and hard work, it has happened.
We have a comprehensive development plan for your parish. We started off with the South Southern Coastal Highway Improvement Project, a 16-kilometre four-lane highway from Harbour View to Yallahs and 96 kilometres of improved roadway from Yallahs to Port Antonio. All of that together represents approximately 200 million US dollars of expenditure, that is about 32 billion dollars spent on improving access through the parish, and it wasn’t all the main road. We improved the road access for Cedar Valley as well as other roads leading off. And it wasn’t just roads, we also put in water, we put in sewage and we also laid the conduits and cables for broadband internet to come to this parish.
We have built this Morant Bay Urban Centre at a cost of 6 billion Jamaican dollars. We have built the Yallahs Fire Station at a cost of 163 million Jamaican dollars. We have upgraded the Acadia and Port Morant Health Centre at a cost of 37 million Jamaican dollars, not to mention the amount of social housing that we have given in the parish and today I’ll be handing over about six more and we’re not stopping yet because there is much more to be done; much, much more.
We have thirteen-and-a-half acres of land in proximity to this development, and I want you to look out for it because I intend to come to the first festival or stage show that is kept there when Gramps and the Morgan family is performing, when Popcaan- as Prime Minister, of course, what do you think? I intend to be there to hear Tonian Singh sing.
I’m not going do any singing today, but we’re going to develop that thirteen-and-a-half acres of land into a multipurpose entertainment and sports facility that is going to be the envy of other parishes.
This project is not yet finished because we’re going to do another extension of ten acres of new buildings for micro and small businesses in St Thomas right here, right in this centre. And we are not just thinking for five years, we’re thinking for the next 50 years, this Urban Centre is going to grow and so we are taking the steps necessary to ensure that we have access to the lands around the Urban Center to secure its future expansion.
We are very happy that we can bring a university to the parish. We’re very happy that the Heart Trust is going to be here, not just as an administrative office, but they will have the training facilities here as well. When I heard the announcement that PICA would be here a lot of noise went up for them, JPS, NWC, National Housing Trust, Jamaica Information Service; all kinds of government entities are going to be here so the people of St Thomas don’t have to travel to Kingston to be connected with their government. They can come right here. Oh, did I mention that the tax office will be here as well?
But while I’m very proud of this building, which is your municipal head office, your parish council head office building, I’m also very proud of the courthouse, and there’s a reason. You see, a part of the spark for the Morant Bay Rebellion was that the small farmers, the children of the former enslaved who worked the fields trying to do their little business, they couldn’t get justice. They were occupying lands and the plantation owners didn’t want them to become subsistent farmers so they did all kinds of things to undermine their occupation of the land so that they had to come back to the plantation to work. And therefore, even if as freedmen they would go to plead their case in court, they couldn’t get any justice because the administration of the court system was also a part of the planter class and that created a sense of injustice in the society and that boiled over into the rebellion. So it is very symbolic that we are going to be putting right here the most modern court facility in Jamaica and possibly indeed in the Caribbean right here in the Morant Bay Urban Centre.
We are also going to be building out medical facilities, and this will host 25 specialized units ranging from general practitioners, paediatricians, neurologists, orthopaedic surgeons- you name it, and we will also have a facility for accident and emergency and urgent care. This will significantly improve access to healthcare in St Thomas.
We are laying the foundation, my friends, for a new economy in this parish, and I want you to pay attention to that mission. We’re not going to create prosperity without creating an economy and to create the economy, you have to build infrastructure because it is the infrastructure that creates the platform on which people can do business and generate profit and satisfy demand. This lovely facility here, this very convenient facility here, well designed and well laid out, this is going to create the new economy that will generate the new wealth for the parish, not just for people who are already rich, but for every single person in St Thomas. This will be generating the prosperity that you have always wished for.
The important point to note, however, is that this development is not only going on in St Thomas. We have already started the Boundbrook Urban Centre, so the people of Portland will be experiencing this kind of joy to see the restructuring and redevelopment of their parish, to see the creation of a new economy in their parish.
We have started to acquire lands in Negril because the town of Negril is growing rapidly and it needs its own urban centre. In Portmore, we are looking at a project in Portmore that we are going to be calling the Jamaican Silicon Valley and that project is in its development state. It’s the Naggo Head Integrated Business Centre, and that centre will be the largest project undertaken by the FCJ. It will span 1 million square feet, which would be about two times the size of this project.
Minister Vaz pointed out to me that when I’m speaking, I must mention that it is not just roads that we have built, but we have allocated two bus routes to St Thomas and those two bus routes since they have been installed about four months now, they have carried over a hundred thousand rides, and I am certain that everyone who is using those buses are very happy because it is saving them bus fare, improving their convenience, and it is operating on time.
But more is to come. You’re going to get seven school buses that will be serving some of the remote areas of the parish. I’m certain that the children of this parish will be very happy to be able to use those buses and of course, those buses will be free of cost to them in terms of bus fair.
But what I’m also very proud of and very pleased of, you haven’t seen it yet. Well, you have seen a little of it but St Thomas is going to see an explosion in housing development. Already, we have about two or three housing developments happening along the road corridor, but I’m here to tell you that I am in sight of at least three other major developments to come on more than 3000 acres of land, which will give both accessible, affordable, and low-income housing and middle and upper-income housing. So the entire parish is going to be a place where people are going to come and move in to live. So you have been here suffering for a long time, you are also going to benefit because they have to come to your market, they have to hire you, they have to come and use your service so your parish is going to grow and your income is going to grow. And from your income, you’ll be able to do the things that you have always wanted.
Now, I know I’m the first to tell you that there is still a lot to be done. We know that there are communities that still don’t have proper water supply. We know that there are communities that still have bad roads. We know that there are many houses to be fixed. The last time I toured, they took me on the river bank around that side and showed me how the river was eating away and threatening their houses. We have to address those. So, as I stand here and tell you all the great things, I don’t want you to believe that I am not also aware of the things that are dragging on your mind but anybody can come here and play upon grievance and grouses, but not anyone can actually say, I can deliver. I can deal with those issues. I know how to deal with it because I can show you how I have dealt with it.
So, I said to those persons who choose not to look at the positive side of things, those who choose to see the glass as half empty, I say to them, look to the person who can fill the glass, look to the person who has made the glass half empty because the person who is complaining that the glass is half empty is usually the person who never put a drop in the glass. And if you want the glass to be full, you have to deal with the person who at least brings it from zero to half. We are ready to bring you from zero to a hundred, and even more.
As I close my presentation to you with the showers of blessings on us, I feel like we have closed the circle with Paul Bogle and George William Gordon, who gave their lives and the over 400 Jamaicans who were slaughtered, massacred in the rebellion. I feel that today we are beginning to repair the injustices of the past by our own means and through our own will, we are charting our own course to prosperity, which is the true destiny promised to us. So I want to tell you the people of St Thomas, we are happy with what we have achieved, but we are not comfortable and therefore we are continuing on the journey to make the glass full.
God bless you and thank you.