by

Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP

Prime Minister of Jamaica

at the

Opening of the Caenwood SPARK Road, Hope Bay, Portland

On

July 3, 2026

__________________________________________________________________________

Thank you. The beautiful people of Portland, specifically Western Portland, who came out to greet me and in particular those two young ladies who gave me such a loving embrace. It is indicative of the warmth of the people of this lovely, lovely parish.  As I drove in on your main thoroughfare, your main road here, I reflected on the fact that road would be now close to 15 years old, and it is one of those roads that we consider to be very well built. Rarely is there a pothole or a failure of the surface. All the retaining walls are held up. It is an example to local and international contractors of the quality of work that Jamaica needs to improve its infrastructure, but it also shows that roads can be well built in Jamaica, and that is an example of a well-built road.

Indeed, the road that we open today is designed to last a minimum of seven years without need for rehabilitation. But every road, regardless of how well built, will need to be rehabilitated at some point. The better the road is built, the longer the period before rehabilitation, and the less there will be a need for rehabilitation. As we enter a new phase in the development of roads in Jamaica, we must have the institutional framework and capacity to properly supervise and invigilate the quality of work that is being done. Too often, contractors, engineers, and the people who put the project together may very well be well-meaning, but they don’t always do well, and the quality of work has been called into question, justifiably so, many times.

Under the SPARK Programme, we took a different approach. We had one major contractor, and that one major contractor, we call them the enterprise contractor. They are responsible for the proper planning of the works. Before any asphalt is laid, before any ground is broken, the technical planning work must be done, and that requires a lot of engineers, geoscientists, and people who understand the technical nature of how roads are built. It also requires equipment; it requires a balance sheet to support the work. So, we have a large enterprise contractor in China Harbour to manage this 45-billion-dollar project. The work, obviously, is subcontracted with smaller contractors, and that creates some dilution of the level of supervision that is required. Nonetheless, the main contractor is responsible for quality of the work that is done.

In Jamaica, we have a challenge. Yesterday, I launched the main road aspect of the SPARK Programme, and I dealt with several issues. One of them was the need for the Government to have a partnership with local contractors to support their development because there is no way that we are going to be able to build Jamaica without having a strong local contracting class.

We need good, strong, solid contractors. We need to totally dispense with the view that the contractor is a man with a little bag, and he might have maybe a truck and a little backhoe there, and they can take on massive, complex work like the SPARK Programme. We need to change that. We need our contractors to move up to a level of enterprise and corporate thinking, where they are investing in their business, they are getting technical skills, and they are building the balance sheet to be able to properly execute the level of work that the Government is coming with.

Never, and I can say this without fear of contradiction, never has any Government in Jamaica been in the position to spend as much as this Government will be spending, or has spent, on infrastructure. So, we solved the problem, technically, of finding the resources to build the roads. The big challenge now is ensuring that, when the resources are allocated, we get the best out of it. That is the big problem right now. So, we are contemplating ways in which we can work to support the emergence of a new generation of contractors who see themselves reflected in the work that they put out, who believe that the infrastructure is a reflection of their pride and dignity. When some of you travel abroad and you see those lovely highways, those well-built bridges, and sometimes you marvel at how they are built, we need some of our contractors now to start thinking in this way, to see themselves in the work that they deliver as part of the dignity and the ambitions of the people. So, you don’t just do the road, throw the leftovers on the side, and leave it there. As a contractor, you must say, “that is infra dig; that is disrespectful to me as a person. I would never, ever do that.” But not all of them think that way. So, we need the emergence of a new contracting class that fits the ambition of the infrastructure we are trying to build.

I understand the frustration of every single Jamaican about the road conditions. We will improve all the roads. It will take some time, but we are building out the plan. I explained yesterday that, if we were to fix every road in Jamaica, not even to the quality of your main road there, but to this quality, it would take us between five and seven trillion dollars, meaning we would have to take the national budget for five years thereabout and do nothing else but fix roads. Of course, that is impossible. But even if we did that, if we didn’t have good contractors who could bring the work on budget and on time, it wouldn’t take five years. It would take us a decade or more to fix all our roads. That is the reality we face. I am not asking for patience. I am not asking for any understanding, essentially. Citizens will put pressure on their Governments to respond, without question. That is the process of our democracy. But I want there to be a greater appreciation for the magnitude of the problems that the country faces. This is not necessarily a political issue. This is an issue relating to finance, economics, technical competence, and abilities.

The Government is working towards ensuring that both elements of the problem are addressed, to make sure the economics and the finance are being dealt with while improving the technical competence and know-how of the people who will take the funds and actually convert it into roads. So, I want to give you the assurance, give the Jamaican people the assurance, that your Government is paying full attention to improving your roads.

God bless you and thank you.

by

Dr. the Most Honourable Andrew Holness, ON, PC, MP,

Prime Minister of Jamaica

at the

NSHP House Handover in Caenwood, Hope Bay, Portland

on

July 3, 2026

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For those 500 houses and several basic schools, obviously this is a Member of Parliament who has the interest of the people at heart, a working and effective Member of Parliament. Now to the matter at hand, it is my distinct pleasure to hand over this social housing unit to a worthy recipient. His name, for those of you who don’t know, is Recardo Gibson, otherwise known as “bad luck”.

I officially change his name from “bad luck” to “good luck”. So now he’s officially Recardo “good luck” Gibson, because obviously the Lord has smiled at him through the New Social Housing Programme to give him a structure for himself and his wife and his other family members can live with some dignity.

It is always, for me, a sign of the effectiveness of the programme that when the benefit is individualized as it is now, one person is getting the benefit or a family, the entire community comes out in celebration of that person. Every one of you there secretly in your mind saying, I wish it were me, right? I know every one of you saying that I wish it were me, but you know what? None of you are saying it should never have been him. No bad mind and that tells you that the programme is effective, that the person selected is definitely a person in need and that by this person getting it, he has been made better off.

No one has been denied anything or made worse off. So, as a result of that, the entire community and everybody’s welfare has improved. Having this lovely structure in the community has lifted the community.

When others of you decide to build, you’re going to say, “I want my house to look like this and to be as strong as this.” And so, this house also changes the possibilities for you and your expectations. So, that again lifts the community.

The commitment of the government is to make 6,000 of these houses. It is a challenging thing because it is not as if we are building 6,000 houses in one location where we can benefit from the economies of scale, the logistics of transportation and movement of labor and all of that. It’s dispersed all over the island, going up into the hills and valleys and all kinds of areas that are very difficult to engineer buildings. That is where people have land and so that is where we have to bring houses.

I should take this opportunity for the press that is here. The programme is pivoting, and it has to pivot because of Hurricane Melissa. I am here today in Portland, which though affected, was certainly not at the level of St. Elizabeth, Westmoreland, Hanover, St. James, Trelawny and parts of St. Ann and Manchester. Those areas were particularly badly damaged and so the programme has to pivot its resources to support the rebuilding of houses in those areas and we have tasked the New Social Housing Programme to support the deployment of what we call the modular semi-permanent housing solution. Some people say container homes; that’s not the accurate description. We had bought them from China. We have imported them into Jamaica, but they need a base. You can’t just put them down on the raw earth so, they have to create a concrete platform.

The New Social Housing Programme team has developed the skill in working in dispersed areas that they will take on that task along with the NHT and ODPEM to ensure that those 2,500 semi-permanent modular housing solutions can be actually implemented. Now when those 2,000 units are put in place, we will monitor them. We will study them to see how well they stand up to Jamaican conditions, to see potentially how long they will last because you know our culture. Our culture is that a good house must be concrete and steel and a slab roof, right? You all know this huff and puff and blow your house down.

Nobody must be able to huff and puff and blow your house down in Jamaica. We build strong. We overbuild but technology is changing, building materials are changing and right now you have houses that can be assembled in days that can withstand hurricane winds. They are prefabricated, well-engineered solutions and we need to find ways to bring that into Jamaica to allow persons who are building to get access to that kind of building system.  Instead of going to ply and zinc, we could replace that with more modern, aesthetically pleasing and more ergonomic building systems that give you more functionality and safety and more value.

So, the new direction of the New Social Housing Programme is not just to build the houses but to stimulate a change in building culture in Jamaica at the grassroots level and so they are working on a programme for that.

by

Dr. the Most Honorable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP

Prime Minister of Jamaica

 at the

SPARK Main Road Launch

On

 July 2, 2026

_______________________________________________________________________

The SPARK Programme is a $45 billion infrastructure programme. It provides $20 billion for main roads, $16 billion for community roads, $5 billion for water infrastructure, and $4 billion for engineering, designs, consultancy, supervision, and associated costs.

This is very important to know. Not all the roads are asphalt and pipes. Much of what we do is about planning for the road. So, this phase targets critical corridors and 63 main roads across the island that connect communities, parishes, and economic centers to improve the wider transportation network. The Government  will be spending 20 billion dollars on Main Road component of the SPARK Programme.

So, even before we put a backhoe on the road, there is a significant volume of work that is done to ensure that the road is done well and will last. In fact, the proprietary works are just as important, if not more important, than the actual implementation and construction. So, I want the public to understand that for all the roads that we are doing under the SPARK programme, and indeed for any roads, a large part of the budget, or rather a significant part of the budget, goes towards the proprietary work; the engineering, the designs, and the environmental studies. We also have to do a business case, an economic case and the traffic studies. All of those things are done and that, of course, lengthens the implementation for the road.

Now, I want to acknowledge directly the frustration caused by the conditions of many roadways in Jamaica. I hear the protests and the calls to the radio stations complaining about your roads. I am in communities all over Jamaica and one of the topics that persons come to me about is the roads. I get many messages, emails, and calls and if I were to categorize them, roads would be a significant complaint.

Recently, I saw an article where one of our Members of Parliament, Duane Smith for Northwest St. Andrew, was tackled by the Citizens Association in his communities about their roads, and rightfully so, there are so many communities with roads that are deteriorating. There’s nothing that I say here that any of the residents who are suffering from bad road conditions will take comfort in, because the truth is that the citizens, they don’t judge the road programme of the Government by the contract sign or a lovely ceremony such as this one or the billions that I am announcing. That’s not what they’re interested in. What the public is interested in is that when they get up in the morning, they go in their car and they’re driving to work, they don’t hit a pothole. They want to just drive on a smooth road and back home.

For many of them, the question is, “Is that too much to ask? Is that too much to ask of our Government ?” Then there are those who will say, “I’ve traveled to other places, and they all have smooth roads and good infrastructure. Why can’t we?” So, I want to say I understand the frustration, but it is not so simple. I know that’s not what you want to hear. The roads, bridges, hospitals, water systems and sewer systems are very complicated and complex undertakings, not to mention they are very expensive. Nonetheless, your Government  has the ambition to deliver to you the “carpets” that you want from your home to your work or to whatever endeavor it is and back.

You want the smooth road because it is a sign of modernity. It’s a sign of development. It is part of the quality of life that you experience. We want you to have the best experience and the best quality of life. So, that is why we have developed this SPARK Programme, which is the first attempt of the Government  to not just patch roads, but to do mass rehabilitation of roads. I want to make that distinction. The Government  can patch roads, and we do patch roads all over Jamaica, but to be fair, a patching programme will not bring the road network to the quality that you desire.

What you are seeing happening now is that we are beginning to patch the patches. The reason for that, friends, is that Jamaica’s road infrastructure is aged. This is a very difficult point to make to a citizen who is frustrated by the road that passes their gate. I will give you an example. So, in many of these cities, there are the communities in Northwest St. Andrew, in my own constituency, West Central St. Andrew, in West Kingston, but wherever it is across Jamaica, many of those roads were built more than 50 years ago. In fact, if you were to do a roster of all the roads in Jamaica and put a date as to when those roads were constructed, 90% of the roadways in Jamaica would have been constructed more than 60 years ago. If we are honest with ourselves and ask how many of those roads were totally rehabilitated, it would be less than 5%.

So, the challenge that you are facing now with roads is not just the weather. It’s not just the lack of maintenance or damage done to roads by how we use the roads. It is that the asphalt has reached its physical limit. It’s just the reality, and even if you were to patch it, that does not solve the problem, because the sub-base of the road has also deteriorated. But there is also another factor. These roads that were designed and built more than 60 years ago were not designed and built for the level of rain and water that they have to carry, for the level of traffic that used them, and for the weight. So, I’m not trying to ask for understanding of the country, because I do understand the frustration, but it is important that when we start to vent about the roads, we also appreciate what the challenge is. Now, you’ll never escape politics in the matter of roads. So, there is an argument that says there are some roads that you should focus on. So, there are some main roads. There are some critical thoroughfares. There are some roads that people are going to demonstrate for. So, in other words, politics can have an impact on the budget allocation, but then the question is, should it be that protests and demonstrations determine how Government s plan their road programmes? I’m not giving you an answer. I’m just asking you to consider that because were that to be the case, then the people who are going to quarrel louder and so forth may be the ones, but it may not be the economic best decision. It may not be the best strategic decision. I’m saying all of this to the public to appreciate the complexities that your Government  must address in dealing with managing roads.

So where do we start in managing the road? What is the good news? Where is the hope that our roads will be repaired? What is it? Firstly, we have to improve the governance of our roads, how we manage our roads. My grandfather used to be a superintendent in the old PWD. I know that there are many people from that era who reflect upon the efficiency and good management of the Public Works Department. For them, the solution is, why don’t you go back to the Public Works Department? I have been asked this many times. There is a kind of romanticized view of the roads of old and how they were built. There is some value to that observation in the sense of how roads were administered. So first, there were very high standards for road maintenance at the time. There were high standards for road construction at the time, and they were invigilated. They were supervised. They were interrogated. People went and looked and checked but more than that, they maintained a gazette and a register. So, they knew all the roads that were built when they were built. The maintenance schedule could be generated from that.

A fiscal programme, meaning a budget, could be assigned based upon the projected useful life of the road. Somewhere along the line, that broke down to the point where, when I asked the question, how many kilometres of roads do we have, nobody could tell me specifically or exactly, because there are some roads on a register with the parish councils all over the country. There are some roads that have been built but not taken over by the parish council. So, there are orphan roads. There are some roads that are in the Ministry of Agriculture. There are farm roads. The Ministry of Agriculture doesn’t view them as roads. There are some roads that are in housing schemes that were built. Nobody knows of these roads. The NWA maintains a register of about 5,000 kilometres of roads. So, the first thing to do is, let’s do an inventory of our road assets, and that has been done. It’s not complete. It is ongoing I am told that we have about between 25,000 and 27,000 kilometres of roadways in Jamaica. Let’s just be clear on what that means. I mean, that’s about 16,800 miles of roads. Jamaica’s total square kilometres would be about 11,000. That means that we would have probably the highest density of roadways in the Caribbean. I don’t think there is another country that has the density of roadways that we do.

Globally, it is said that Japan would have the highest, and Jamaica, at some point was number two. We may have fallen, but for a country our size to have that level of density of roadways, it is significant and that happened because of our history. The history of the end of the period of enslavement, the rise of free villages, and then the building roads to connect the dispersed population all over the country would mean that we would have built out a very extensive road network. Today, when we have done this survey on all the roads that we have, we really have to start to look at some roads and determine whether or not those roads still carry economic value, whether or not they should still remain on our register of roads, because it’s one thing to have the road there and you’re not using it, yet it is still expected to be maintained.

That is why we have proposed the development of the One Road Authority: to return standards to road construction, to return standards to road maintenance, to ensure there is a budget for road maintenance that matches the economic and engineering life of the road, so that there can also be a preventative maintenance programme, but more importantly, there is a regulator and someone who will supervise road construction, road maintenance, and preventative work. In addition to that, an authority that has the legal powers to prosecute road users who destroy the national public assets in our roads by improper use or deliberate destruction. That’s the whole purpose of the One Road Authority. That is being worked on. I’ve charged Minister Morgan to have that delivered by early next year. As you know, there is a long process towards establishing an institution, developing the legislation, passing it through parliament, and getting it done. I think we can get it done. So, if we can address the governance issues as it relates to roads, then I think we would be 50% off the way to seeing how we can repair all our critical roads and bring them up to the standards that the public would want.

So, someone once asked me, what would it take to repair all the roads in Jamaica that would be in of need repair? I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Jamaica’s national budget, or last budget, was about $1.4 trillion Jamaican dollars. Just to put that in context, that is $1,000 billion. That’s $1 trillion. So, for us to repair, E.G. and Varden tell me that to do a kilometre of road in Jamaica properly, you would be looking at about $120 to $250 million. That is to put in the drains, and to put the proper chamber, and water mains, and to give you a good first world infrastructure. That’s what you’re looking at on average. So, if we were to repair that 21,000 kilometres to various standards, you’re looking at trillions of dollars. In fact, you would probably be looking at between $5 to $7 trillion.

So, in other words, we would need to use the national budget for about five years and do nothing else. No school, and that includes a pipeline. No school, no hospital, no police, no security, no pension, no public sector workers’ salaries, and no social programmes. So, we would have to forego everything for five years to make an impact. I’m just saying this for the public to understand the magnitude of the problem that we face. The Government isn’t trying to run away from it. In fact, I think this is the first administration that is really trying to grapple with all dimensions of this problem, and to deal with it in a meaningful way that will transform roads. So, the public may not necessarily appreciate that, however, that in the last 20 years, the way in which we have managed roads has changed significantly. I can point this out to you without any fear of contradiction. In the previous decade, let’s say between 2006 to 2016, on average, the Government would have spent something like $8 to $20 billion annually on roads and that would include some amount of emergency repairs.

In the last decade, 2016 to now, the Government is spending somewhere in the region of $25 to $75 billion on road repairs. Even if you were to take out inflation, this is still a significant number of resources that the Government is spending on roads. In fact, the Government has increased spending on roads more than threefold. The majority of the public will say, “I don’t feel it.” That is because of the magnitude of the problem. Let’s face it, we have 300 roads under SPARK. If you look at the number of people who would say, “I feel the improvement of SPARK” it would be very limited compared to everyone else who complains about their roadways, and the reason for that is the SPARK Programme has a community component, which is dispersed. It’s community roads. So, it’s the community that is benefiting from the road that would say, “Yes, my condition has improved.” When they leave the community to go elsewhere, they still encounter bad roads. So, all of that is negated.

So, now we have another element of SPARK, which would be the national roads. So, the community roads, they take you from your home to the main road, and this programme now takes you from the main road to your work, business, or play. It takes you from outside your community into a Commercial Centre or some other critical activity that’s needed for your life. So, those roads are what Varden had displayed. Some of them are very interesting and exciting prospects that will ease traffic congestion and that will increase economic activity. Some of them will require some significant engineering, including putting the road on top of Sandy Gully. Those are some serious engineering requirements, which I would really want to see before any work is done in that regard, because those are serious engineering requirements. They will certainly improve traffic flow within urban centers right across Jamaica.

As was shown, these projects are all over Jamaica. Now, internationally, most developed countries spend around 1% to 2% or 1.5% to 2% of their GDP on their road infrastructure. Generally, their road infrastructure is mature. They probably only need to do routine maintenance and some amount of new capital works. Jamaica is spending just about 2% to 2.5% of its GDP on roads. If we’re going to make an impact, we probably need to spend more like 3% to 5% of our GDP on roads. That would be significant because the question is: what do we cut? It’s an interesting prospect. I have been looking at it to see where else we could divert, or what new allocation we could make, to spend on roads. The answer is, really, there is nothing. We spend about $460 billion on salaries every year. Obviously, that can’t be cut. That’s the largest part of the budget. We spend quite a bit on education. We spend it on health, national security, and debt servicing. That’s 15% to 18% of the budget. As I said, public sector compensation, that’s about 30% of the budget. Grants, pensions and social programmes, that’s another 15% of the budget. So, it’s significant. What we spend on all the other things that make Jamaica run is quite significant relative to the challenges that we face with roads. So, the only way that we’re going to have an expanded budget without compromising all the other things that we’re doing is for there to be growth in the economy. That’s a subject that the people who complain about roads don’t always figure, meaning that it’s a balance, right? That if we’re going to spend it on roads, where is the money going to come from? It has to come from somewhere. It comes from growth, the productivity question.

The good thing about spending time on roadways is that it helps productivity. It helps to create growth. That’s why we are making these massive investments in our roadways, because they increase productivity, which will improve growth, which will give us the funds to reinvest in the infrastructure.

So, I hope today that I’ve been a little bit clearer. This is an explanation of why the roads are the way they are and what the Government is doing to ensure that we can address the road conditions in the country. This programme will, therefore, address the main roads. We have already issued work orders for 31 roads. This means that China Harbor, the contractor on the project, will begin to do the proprietary works before moving into the actual construction. Work on some roads could begin within a year, while others may take up to a year and a half before construction is complete. The public should be assured that these programmes are now officially launched and on the train.

As I close, I will say one last thing about roads. For us to be able to fix all the roads in Jamaica, we need contractors who can work at scale. One of the challenges that we’re facing with the current SPARK Programme is that we simply just don’t have the contracting capacity to manage all the roads at once. The Government is contemplating how we can support the development of a contractor class in Jamaica. I hate to put it that way, but how we must develop the contractor capacity in Jamaica. We need to move away from the notion of the contractor as a one-man operation, engaged on a short-term basis and essentially operating out a bag to the notion of the contractor who is a corporate entity that is invested with a balance sheet that can fund, finance, and carry the work that they are contracted to undertake and to move them to a higher level of professional conduct. We do have some contractors who are demonstrating the level of enterprise and operations that we need to do this level of operation but there are some that are continually disappointed and we will have to address that. As we move forward with this major project and with what we will be doing under NaRRA, contractors are a critical partner in our growth and development.  We are working out a policy. We’ll come to the country with more details as to how we can support contractors, whether it is through training, access to financing, access to equipment, or partnering with other enterprise contractors. We must have a framework that develops a kind of new generation of contractors who can assist, who can be the credible partners that we need to carry out the infrastructure programme.

Look, tripling your capital budget is a major thing, and we have seen our fiscal commissioner report that sometimes we can’t spend the capital budget because the execution, which is a function of the contractors, is deficient. So, it’s one thing for us to have the funds but it’s another thing to be able to implement. So, we have solved the fiscal issues. We have the funds because we have tripled the budget, but the implementation is also a challenge, so we’re going to have to address that.

Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you.

by

Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP

Prime Minister of Jamaica

at the

Suriname Energy, Oil and Gas Summit & Exhibition (SEOGS 2026)

On

June 23, 2026

________________________________________________

Madam President,

Excellencies,

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen,

Good morning,

I bring warm greetings of the government and people of Jamaica, and I thank Staatsolie and the Government of Suriname for the honor of addressing you at this remarkable moment in your history. This session is about the journey from oil and offshore development to project delivery, and there is no better place in the world to have that conversation than right here in your beautiful country. With the final investment decision in GranMorgu and first oil now in sight, Suriname has crossed the threshold from promise to delivery. This is the largest investment in your nation’s history, but it is more than just a Surinamese milestone.

When one of our nations in the region rises, the entire region rises. So, on behalf of Jamaica, I say to Suriname, congratulations. We are proud of you, and we stand with you with recoverable resources of more than seven hundred and fifty million barrels, an investment of approximately ten point five billion United States dollars, and a planned production capacity of two hundred and twenty thousand barrels per day, GranMargu is not simply another energy project. It represents an economic transformation. The International Monetary Fund estimates that by 2029, the fiscal revenues generated by this development could be equivalent to approximately one-fifth of Suriname’s present economic output. Equally important is the fact that Suriname is not standing at the margin of its own development. Through Staatsolie twenty percent (20%) participation requiring approximately 2.4 billion United States dollars in financing, national ownership is being built into the project from the beginning. That is an important example for the entire region; that is an important position to take in your own development. Foreign capital and expertise can be welcomed while the people who own the resources retain a meaningful stake in the value it creates.

We meet at a time when the world is anxious about energy. There is a school of thought that says the age of oil and gas is ending, and that the only respectable conversation is about how quickly to leave it behind. The reality, however, is that the world’s renewable energy transition is being outpaced by the growth of total energy demand and as was presented, it is clear that the growth of energy demand will be significant, and we will still need to invest and support the development of the oil and gas industry to meet that demand. But let me be clear, that is not an argument against renewables.

Jamaica is among the most climate vulnerable nations on Earth. Just last year, we were hit by the most powerful hurricane ever recorded, and we are therefore acutely aware of the climate imperative and urgency, but precisely because we are realists about the climate, we must also be realists about energy. The responsible path is not oil or renewables; it is a pragmatic mix. Oil, gas, solar, hydro, and eventually nuclear. That keeps the lights on while we build a cleaner future our children deserve. For many years, Jamaica spoke about energy principally as a consumer. In 2024 alone, we imported nearly two billion United States dollars in petroleum products and natural gas. Every international price shock is therefore transmitted into our electricity bills. Transportation costs, food costs, and foreign exchange demand, which all are wrapped up into the cost of living. That is why today, Jamaica is taking charge of its own energy future. Jamaica operates Petrojam, one of CARICOM’s few functioning petroleum refineries, with a nominal capacity of approximately 35,000 barrels per day. We have an ambitious plan to modernize it because we believe it can serve Jamaica more efficiently and contribute alongside facilities such as Staatsolie’s refinery here in Suriname to the resilience of the wider Caribbean energy system.

Jamaica is also seriously exploring its own offshore frontier. Yes, we are known for our beaches, tourism and culture, but who knows? Maybe in the grand design there is some oil offshore somewhere. Early-stage seabed work completed this year has returned encouraging preliminary signs of a working petroleum system across a basin, whose potential is estimated in the billions of barrels.  And I’m seeing some eyes opening right here in the audience. Yes. But you who are the experts in this room, you know that it is a long journey from discovery to delivery.  These are early days. We have not confirmed commercial volumes, and no promises are being made. We’re cautious and prayerfully optimistic. Even as we explore what may lie beneath our waters, Jamaica is diversifying its energy base with determination.

In 2024, natural gas supplied approximately 60% of our grid electricity, petroleum supplied approximately 30%, and renewable resources just over 10%. Our objective is to generate half of our electricity from renewable resources by 2030. We have already awarded approximately 100 megawatts of new solar generation, and we have launched the largest renewable energy tender ever undertaken in the Caribbean, 300 megawatts of renewable generation paired with 150 megawatts of battery storage. Energy security for a small island like Jamaica is never about betting on one fuel or one supplier. It is about building many parts so that we keep the lights on, the economy moving, the cost of living within reach of our people, whatever the world may throw at us. That brings me to the larger idea I want to leave with you.

For most of our modern history, the Caribbean’s energy security depended on forces outside the region, on the goodwill of others whose circumstances could change overnight. We learned how fragile that is when a war on the far side of the world sent fuel prices and food prices spiraling, and small economies like ours paid the bill. Something historic is now possible among Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and perhaps in time, others, Jamaica, this region holds world-class resources that opens an opportunity we have never had before, energy security supplied within our own family. Producers supplying reliable oil and gas at fair and predictable prices. Islands given the runway to scale the renewables that suit them best. This is what Economic Integration was always meant to deliver. Now, we have an opportunity to make energy the strongest thread binding our single market together.

For our region, energy independence means keeping value, capital, and decision-making in our own hands, so that when the next global shock comes, we are not waiting for others to decide our fate. Let me close on this. The wealth beneath our waters belongs to Suriname and to your generations. To the Surinamese children not yet born: you hold this in trust and history will judge the generations of leaders in your country and in other countries that have discovered oil and other such natural resources. So, across our region we will be judged by not what or how much we extracted from our natural resources, but how wisely we steward these resources for future generations to benefit.

There are so many examples of countries that have extracted natural resources, and in retrospect, on reflection, the most was not made of it. Jamaica has had this experience and other countries have had many other experiences. In fact, there are those in my own country who look at the possibility of discovering oil and extracting oil as a potential curse on the country, but I believe the experiences of the past are there to give us a particular value, and that is, we must not make the mistakes of the past, we must learn from them. I firmly believe that Suriname, Guyana and other countries that are discovering these resources have far more experience, far more knowledge, and far more commitment to ensuring that these resources are used ultimately for the benefit of the current generation and future generations to come.

I’ve spoken with your president, I believe Suriname has a very thoughtful and dedicated leader, and I want to commend my colleague head in CARICOM, President Jennifer Geerlings-Simons for the spectacular work that you’re doing in leading your nation, and I see a great future for the people of Suriname.

So let us be worthy of that trust. Let us turn discovery into development and development into dignity. Let us prove that our nations can manage great wealth with great responsibility. Suriname, you have unlocked something powerful. May it bring lasting prosperity to your people, and may your example inspire a whole region to claim its own future with the same courage.

Thank you.

by

Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP

Prime Minister of Jamaica

at the

11^th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference

on

June 16, 2026

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‘No weh no better than yard!’ I just felt that a while ago. I mean, isn’t Minister Johnson Smith such a wonderful minister? I believe she’s the best minister of foreign affairs, but I think she gave my speech.

Bishop, the Honourable Conrad Pitkin representing His Excellency the Governor General,

The Speaker of the House, the Most Honourable Juliet Holness,

Dr Horace Chang, our Deputy Prime Minister. We affectionately refer to him as the President of the Republic of Montego Bay

And of course, my dear friend, Mr Mark Golding. Mark, how could I forget you? It was not always the case at these events that the leader of the opposition was invited to speak, but as this event evolved into more of a national event rather than a government-sponsored event, it became the protocol that the leader of the opposition, which is a constitutional position, quite a unique thing in constitutional innovations to have the office of the leader of the opposition written into the constitution. So, Mark, we can never forget you, and we’re always happy to have you here as leader of the opposition.

That’s how we do it in Jamaica. That is the strength of Jamaican democracy. Don’t let anybody fool you about Jamaica’s democracy. There is no other country whose democracy is as strong as Jamaica’s. Believe me when I tell you that. I have always said that Jamaica is the first Black democracy in the world, and I have not been contradicted successfully so far, but it is the truth. It is something that we can be proud of. And listen, democracy is not a sanitized exercise. It can be brutal but many of you are from countries where the brutality of the democracy is probably worst, so you well understand that what you read in the papers and on social media, it’s just part of the democracy.

Let me welcome you all back home, back to Jamaica. I am very happy to see you, and I’m very pleased to see a super packed room. I mean, you look good. There is an energy among Jamaicans, and you can feel it even before anyone says a word. It’s warmth, its spirit, it’s the memory of collective struggle, it’s the swag, it’s the assertiveness, it’s the ambition. I think that’s the word that describes us; ambition, and I feel it and see it in this room.

Over the past eight months, Jamaica has carried grief, loss, worry, and hard work. Hurricane Melissa tested us, but the Jamaican spirit held and held strong. When Melissa made landfall on October 28th last year, it came as a Category 5 hurricane. It’s the strongest storm to have hit Jamaica, and it is the third strongest hurricane on record. In a few hours, communities built over generations were wiped out. The call went out and you answered. From the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Panama, all over wherever there were Jamaicans, wherever you planted roots, you responded. You sent funds, you organized relief, you spoke up for Jamaica, you called home, and you checked in, that made a world of difference. So before I speak about plans, programmes, financing, or reconstruction, I want to begin with the simplest thing we do in Jamaica, which is to express gratitude, ‘tenkie.’ Let me see the real Jamaicans who understand that. That’s what my grandmother used to say, “Thank you.”

Thank you for proving again that distance has never weakened the bond between Jamaica and Jamaicans abroad. And this is why the theme of this 11th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference, “Diaspora Partnerships: Rebuilding a More Resilient Jamaica,”, already has flesh on it. You acted before the conference banner went up. You moved before the speeches were written. You showed what partnership looks like when we are tested. This week gives that partnership more structure, more focus, and more work to do. I’m happy to hear that there are projects already structured for communities that have been affected by the hurricane. Thank you for your service and your contribution.

In six years, Jamaica faced COVID-19- that’s almost a distant memory, a global supply chain crisis, the war in the Ukraine, food and fuel shocks, Hurricane Beryl, Tropical Storm Rafael, Hurricane Melissa, and now another Middle East war. All of this created pressure on our country, whether it is in energy, supply chain; everything. And so, for a small open economy, Jamaica as a small island developing state exists in a very brutal space and we face increasing, overlapping, and greater intensity events. That is the nature of the challenge we face but yet Jamaica has held, and we have held up very well.

Unemployment is at a record low. We’re moving from as high as 13% ten years ago to now just about 3.5% the last figures that came out. It’s a massive reduction. It has pushed us now, believe it or not, to practically full employment, and businesspeople and employers will tell you that we now have another problem, a different problem, that we just can’t find enough skilled labour to carry through the growth agenda. It’s a good problem to have, but it’s a problem nonetheless, and I’m hopeful that this will be teased out a little bit more in the conversations that you will have in the sessions to follow. Inflation is back within our target band of 4 – 6%, and we have kept within the target band except for the COVID period for the last decade, and that is exceptional for a small island developing state where inflation was a real challenge for our economic management.

Now there’s one thing that I know Jamaicans are very sensitive about and for many years we have just felt devalued by it. And what’s that? That’s the devaluation, depreciation of our currency. For the Jamaicans who are from the era of the ’60s and ’70s, we recall parity and when the Jamaican dollar and the US dollar were almost equal, and then two to one, and then it just kept sliding and the sliding of the currency is almost a personal devaluation of our worth.

Well, for the last five years or more, we have had a stable currency. I want you to reflect on that and how huge an achievement that is. Not talked about too much, but I thought I would place it in the minds of our diaspora to consider that. That’s a huge change in the Jamaican situation. And by the way, the currency is a freely floating currency. There are not many countries in the Caribbean or even regionally that have a freely floating currency, and we do that whilst maintaining the highest level of reserves in Jamaica’s history.

There were times when we didn’t have the 13 weeks of foreign exchange reserve, which is usually a kind of test benchmark as to whether or not the country can survive and purchase the goods and services that it needs. We have now the highest levels of reserves ever, and as our minister of finance likes to term it, it’s the rent money that is what guarantees that we are able to truly run Jamaica.

Another thing to pay attention to is that when Melissa struck, all three major international credit rating agencies reaffirmed Jamaica’s standing, and Moody’s even upgraded us. Now, that’s a major achievement. I mean, the rating agencies don’t only look at our financial situation, they take a very comprehensive overview of the country including the economics, the social, the governance, safety, peace, democracy. All of these issues are placed in the algorithm, if you will, of the review, and a determination is made on the country’s rating.

Now, it’s one thing for the rating agencies to come up with a rating or to reaffirm or to improve your rating. What we want to do is to translate that rating for the average Jamaican to appreciate the improvement. So, whilst we celebrate the ratings, we acknowledge without fear of admitting that we still have a lot of work to do. We are not here bragging; we’re acknowledging what we have done and acknowledging that there is still much more to be done.

But the credibility of performance is an asset. Jamaica did not always have this asset of credibility of performance. For many decades, we were viewed as the basket case. Today, we are viewed as the case study. And we leverage that asset of performance and asset of credibility, and we mobilized US$6 billion in reconstruction financing. We were never able to do that before, but we were able to do that now and that is what credibility buys. It buys us time, it buys us trust, it buys us speed, especially when families cannot afford delays.

So, the leader of the opposition is quite right. We must focus on getting the families who are still in distress after Hurricane Melissa. We must focus on getting them back on their feet, regaining their economic independence so that they can pursue their well-being and prosperity. There is no difference in strategy. There is, however, the question of how, and that is the intersection at which Jamaica finds itself. How can we do it faster, better, stronger? We have utilized the dividend from discipline, and we now have the financing to pursue our recovery and resilience building, but now we must push forward quickly.

I was having a conversation recently with a Jamaican businessman, and he pointed out that the speeches I have been giving about efficiency and productivity in the Jamaican economy, he says, “Prime Minister, you are talking to only a certain level of people, and only a certain level of people will agree with you.” His view is that most Jamaicans, though they may have an instinctive understanding of what we are saying about our country doing things more quickly, more efficiently, he’s of the view that Jamaica needs a cultural revolution for efficiency and productivity. I thought it would be a good place to drop the idea at the Diaspora Conference because many of you live in societies where efficiency and productivity is the number one thing, and accountability both go together. It works as a system. We are therefore fighting a battle here of culture and we are going to need your help in guiding the conversations about the changes that are needed at every level of the society to become a more efficient player on the global stage.

And I say this to you; my speech is prepared with two pages of salutations. Everyone comes up here and reads the salutation. You would probably go about maybe 10 minutes if you were to take everybody’s greeting so I started to do this thing. I’ll greet the most senior representative in the room, go down maybe up to four, and then I would say, “And all nice and decent people”, just to take the edge off anyone else who was not acknowledged. But in an efficient society, that wouldn’t be a challenge. The protocol officers preparing this would abbreviate, we would pay more attention to the minutes, but it’s cultural almost. But you who live in these societies where everything is time-bound, you need to have that discussion with your grandmother and your mother and your brother, people who believe that for something to be immortal, it must be eternal. And we have that culture, if it didn’t take long, it wasn’t well done.

I’ve said it in the opposite way that would have not evoked the applause. If I said it a different way, maybe it would have but you understand what I’m saying but it’s such a great contradiction. We are the fastest people in the world so we need the cultural revolution in the way in which we do business so that we can match the speed on the track with the speed on doing business. We must become the fastest economy and society in the world to do business, and we definitely need to develop the kind of social movement towards that.

Listen to these few words that I’m going to say. In a speech to the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce, I said Jamaica could become like Dubai or Singapore. Maybe it is just the exceptional ambition being a Jamaican, but I truly believe we have all the characteristics and assets to achieve that ambition. I truly believe it but we have to wrestle with our culture and our value system. Our value system must change. We must move from seeing work and service as servitude. We must never forget our history of colonialization and exploitation, but we must move from victimhood to agency. We must believe that we have it in ourselves to take charge of our destiny and chart our course and achieve for ourselves. That is what it means to be independent. We must move from the consumer mentality to the producer innovator mentality.

It is not going to be by edict. It’s when the musicians start to write songs about that. The music is such a powerful part of our existence. It is the cheat code to unlocking our culture, but it can start with you, you who have experienced this, you who understand when I say efficiency is a resource like oil, like bauxite, like tourism; efficiency.

People are moving to countries that it’s not just sun, sea, and sand. They are moving to countries that have some other S’s as well, not what you’re thinking; safety, security, seamlessness but they’re also moving to countries that are efficient and so we need to add that to our value proposition. Jamaica, the efficient, productive country. This is why we have implemented the NaRRA, the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority.

Ambassador Major General Antony Anderson is here. I hope you have a booth here today. You will be speaking because I’m sure that there are many members of the diaspora who would want to interact with you to learn a little bit more about NaRRA, including the FAST aspect of NaRRA. FAST is a part of NaRRA. It’s the Facilitated Acceleration of Strategic Transformation, where if you have a project of US$15 million or more, and it fits within the reconstruction and resilience framework, it’s a private project but it fits within what we’re doing, so we may be building a road and you have some lands in proximity, let us know if you are going to develop the land so we can know how to size the sewage, the water, the utilities, and to help you get the approvals and to start the project so that way we crowd in investment into the government train line of investment.

It’s still in its developing stages. We will announce the board of JAMRROC, which is the oversight body and the executive director is already in place. He is standing up his offices now, and we’ll be recruiting staff. We’re giving ourselves a very tight timeline of about three months to have everything established and operational but as a past military man, he will have multiple lines of efforts into this, so who knows, maybe he will come in at two months. At that there should just be a salute. We want to encourage you to use the NaRRA platform and the FAST platform to look at the investments that could come.

I want to remind you very quickly of another development in Jamaica, which it’s being talked about, but sometimes it is overshadowed. Over the past three years, Jamaica has made real progress in public safety. In 2023, homicides fell by 8%. In 2024, they fell by a further 19%. In 2025, they fell by 42%, and as of May 2026, murders are down a further 22.5% compared to the same period last year. Taken together, homicides are down by 67% over the past four years. These are not just numbers, they are lives saved, it’s a child who did not lose their father, communities where people are beginning to breathe a little easier, businesses that can now open later, young men who are alive today because violence did not take their lives.

The progress has come obviously because of stronger law enforcement, better intelligence, community work, but the progress has really come because we have transformed the Jamaica Constabulary Force. The JCF is now the model institution in the region for law enforcement. We have deployed in other countries that have requested our assistance, which we gladly give because we have learned some hard lessons, the men and women of the JCF, but those lessons have to be shared. A part of that lesson is that the criminal network is connected. Please forgive what I’m about to say. The criminals have representatives in the diaspora as well and so as they become more transnational, the criminals, the government of Jamaica has increased its transnational cooperation with other countries and security forces to make sure that criminals have no place to hide.

We have especially increased our cooperation with the government of the United States, which has resulted in several important initiatives and changes. And recently you would have seen some very high-profile arrests taking place, both on the lottery scamming front and on the interdiction for the illegal importation of weapons into Jamaica and we will continue to cooperate with the United States and other countries on security matters. And we are cognizant that as security operations are stepped up in the Eastern Caribbean, criminals and their networks will seek to divert more into the Northern Caribbean, but we are preparing and we are prepared for them.

We have now today a Jamaica where the JCF is well-funded. We haven’t said this too often, but we have almost tripled the national security budget over the last decade and that has increased the capabilities and capacity of the JCF. For the first time in its history, the JCF is now at its established strength of fourteen thousand plus. Before they hovered at 12,500, sometimes even less. Now even with attrition, we are at our establishment. The JDF similarly, we have almost doubled the size of the JDF. And the focus of both organizations, it is not merely the kinetic operations which make the news and how effective they have been at interdicting, intercepting, and unfortunately sometimes those who challenge would have lost life, but the key to the JCF and the JDF is to create a space where communities can flourish, yes, but where businesses can grow and flourish as well.

As members of the diaspora, when I interact with you, one of the first things you point out to me, you say, “Prime Minister, I would love to come back, but the crime”. As you can see, we’re getting that under control. It is our intention to bring our murder rate down to the regional average, which is 15 per 100,000, which would mean that we would have about 500 or less murders per year, and we will continue to push until our murder rate is zero. That’s the ambitious objective, but an ambition, nonetheless.

Then you raise the issue of healthcare and so we have a big plan in place for healthcare. Under NaRRA, we will be rebuilding four hospitals, including starting the reconstruction and strengthening of the KPH, the Kingston Public Hospital, to turn that into a modern health facility. We will be shortly opening the newly refurbished Cornwall Regional Hospital, and shortly thereafter or probably at the same time the Northwest Children Adolescent Hospital here in Montego Bay so we are making the investments in our healthcare.

But one of the big issues for members of the diaspora is housing. I know, I’ve read the horror stories of members of the diaspora sending back money to Jamaica to build the fancy mansion, and then to their terrible surprise upon landing hoping to have the enjoyment of the beautiful facility, when they turn up, either there is no house or a shack. We have read the horror stories.

The housing market in Jamaica is expanding, and it is expanding rapidly, particularly in the private sector and I encourage all Jamaicans overseas to participate here in the real estate market in Jamaica. Get your second home here, or even your first home, get it here in Jamaica. That will help to drive the economy and in a strange way, that will also help the NHT to refocus its effort on providing low-income and affordable housing to those Jamaicans who can’t afford the prices in the private housing market. I think the diaspora can play an incredible role in supporting the private real estate market, and I encourage all of you here to buy a piece of Jamaica in the private real estate markets.

So, ladies and gentlemen, it was a great pleasure being with you. You have been a lovely audience, and I hope that I’ve been able to take you through the emergence of Jamaica as the place of choice to live, work, do business, raise families, and as I like to say, retire in paradise.

God bless you and thank you.

by

Dr the Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP

Prime Minister of Jamaica

at the

Official Opening of the Troy Bridge

on

June 5, 2026

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Today we gather to celebrate the opening of a bridge, but in truth, we are celebrating something much greater than a bridge. We are celebrating reconnection. We are celebrating resilience. We are celebrating the triumph of persistence over delay. For the people of this area, the Troy Bridge is not simply a physical structure, it is part of the history of this community, and part of the story of Jamaica itself.

The original bridge was built in 1869. Pause for a moment and consider what that means. It could mean that your great, great, great grandparent would have walked across that bridge when it was just built, or maybe even helped to build it. This bridge stood before the arrival of motor vehicles in Jamaica so this bridge was built to carry donkey cart but for 152 years, and in the last 60 of those 152 years, it would have carried some heavy-duty trucks. It stood before electricity reached here. It stood through generations of change, connecting families, farmers, merchants, churches, schools, communities right across the parishes of Manchester and Trelawny.

But I want you to consider that this bridge was constructed after a pivotal point in Jamaica’s history. A point which some of you may know about by virtue of the limited exposure you would have to this event in your school curriculum. I’m expecting that the children who are gathered here from Troy Primary and Troy High and forgive me if I don’t remember all the other schools that are here, The Morant Bay Rebellion.

How many people know of the Morant Bay Rebellion?

It is why we celebrate the national heroes, Paul Bogle and George William Gordon. We don’t know, many of us, what really happened there. We know there was a rebellion, over 300 Jamaicans were killed, estates were burned; it was a massive rebellion, but what it did was to spark a renewed interest on how Jamaica was governed by the British colonial power.  After the rebellion, the then governor, Governor Eyre, was recalled, and indeed he was tried in the United Kingdom. A new governor was sent to Jamaica.

In fact, there was a Royal Commission to study why there was the rebellion, and the commission found many things. It’s not my time today to present on what the commission found, but what it did find was that Jamaica was not being properly administered; governance, infrastructure development. And they decided that the parliament at the time would be dissolved because there was a local parliament of local planters and wealthy people and after that parliament was dissolved, Jamaica became a Crown colony, meaning that it was administered directly from the United Kingdom. It didn’t have its local parliament to administer its affairs anymore because it was clear that there was a failure in the local governance of affairs in Jamaica.

And out of that came a massive thrust to reorganize and redevelop Jamaica. Somewhere around 1867 thereabout, they started to restructure Jamaica. Jamaica at that time had 22 parishes, they whittled down the parishes to 14 so that it could be properly administered. I know it in the minds of Jamaicans, it is inconceivable for some that we could have other parishes but during that period of time, for the better service of the people, the administrative and geographic arrangements were important. The new administration of Jamaica, which was coming centrally from the colonial powers in the UK, decided that they would cut from 22 to 14 but they also implemented a massive programme of public works.

Out of that Royal Commission, and the new governor, which was sparked as a result of the Morant Bay rebellion, we had the formation of the Jamaica Constabulary Force. We had a new judicial system put in place and we had the Public Works Department formed, and out of that came massive public works, including the Rio Cobre Canal, which irrigated some 25,000 acres of land, the building of many of the roads that still exist today and bridges including the Troy Bridge, which was started in somewhere about 1868 and completed in 1869.

I want you to settle on that point because fast forward to today, it took us almost five years to build a replacement bridge. The bridge that was first built wasn’t built to carry lorries and heavy-duty trucks and the high volume of traffic, but it lasted for 152 years. It would have seen Hurricane Charley, Hurricane Ivan, all the hurricanes. It was built by virtue of a national thrust directed by the colonial government, and we independent people struggle internally to deliver infrastructure quickly. This speech is not just for you; it is for all Jamaica listening.

This bridge, it is not only for the benefit of Troy and the communities around, this bridge is a lesson to Jamaica. Like much of our infrastructure, people scarcely noticed it when it was working but when Tropical Storm Grace destroyed the bridge in 2021, everyone suddenly understood its value. The closure of this crossing did not simply create great inconvenience, it disrupted lives. Students had to travel long distances to school, farmers incurred higher transportation costs to move their produce to market. And by the way, the idea behind this bridge was to open up what was called the Yam Belt in Trelawny to move the yams through this bridge, through Manchester to carry you into Kingston to get connected to the ports so the infrastructure supported an economic plan.

It is quite unfortunate that somehow successive governments, have not seemed to have the ability to effect infrastructure plans that support economic plans and social development. Think about it. This is an infrastructure, before it was destroyed and replaced, that we relied on for 152 years. The destruction of this bridge reminded us of a simple truth: infrastructure is not merely concrete and steel. Infrastructure is opportunity made real, opportunity materialized, opportunity accessible. Infrastructure is productivity made possible.

Throughout history, the great civilizations of the world understood this principle. The Romans built roads and bridges not as monuments, but as instruments of commerce, administration, and national cohesion. Across every successful nation, transportation networks have reduced distance, expanded opportunity, and created prosperity. Jamaica’s development must follow that same path. The roads, bridges, railways, ports that were built during the 19th and 20th century connected our people to markets, connected communities to each other, and connected the nation to economic opportunity.

The Troy Bridge belongs to that proud tradition, but at this point, the nation should consider that much of our infrastructure that we have today was generated from that era of infrastructure rapid growth planning. That infrastructure is now aged. It has outlived its useful and engineered life. It is very difficult to communicate that thought to the average person coming on the road to get here, which is pothole-filled and bumpy, difficult to manoeuvre, and in sections collapsing. All you want to hear is how are we going to replace that road and why is the road bad without necessarily appreciating the context behind this.

As a member of Parliament, I not just sympathize, I empathize, I understand because there are sometimes when I wish I could complain to somebody too. It is a matter of passing it on to the Prime Minister when the pressure from the citizens reaches you to say, “I’ve brought it to a higher authority to get these roads repaired.” But I want you to bear in mind that we are not going to be able to repair overnight the 20,000 kilometres of roadways that we have, much of which was built over 100 years ago.

The road is not only bad because the contractor didn’t fix it properly, which is oftentimes a reality that we face and cannot be excused. The road isn’t only bad because water intrusion or other weather events. The road is bad because it is old and it was not properly maintained, but even roads that are properly maintained, there is just a time where no matter how much you maintain it, the road has to be totally redone; which is why we have the SPARK Programme.

A lot of people said to us when we were doing the SPARK Programme, “Why not just take the money and patch the road?” That was said even by some of our own MPs because they don’t understand the problem. Every year, Minister Morgan will tell you, he comes to me pleading for more money to do patching and every year we are patching. Sometimes we are patching the patch that we patched. And yes, we have to patch it because of the convenience that you need but you also have to understand that we have to be thinking, how do we now start to replace these aged infrastructure; these old roads that we have, how do we rebuild them and that’s what the SPARK Programme is designed to do. We are literally not just patching and resurfacing, we are rehabilitating.

So, the course is there- thank God we’re not going to have to create new alignments, but we’re going to have to take off the top surface. We’re going to sometime have to go to subsurface. We’re going to have to put in new drains. And as we take off the top surface and the subsurface, sometimes the pipes that are underneath, they are old, we have to change them; that is all about rehabilitation. The SPARK Programme is designed to address this business of aged infrastructure, old infrastructure, to bring them to the modern standards that will give us several generations of roadways that will last.

Today, we are happy for this bridge and it’s not just the restoration of connection, it’s the restoration of dignity. When I saw the first news clips of the kids trying to cross it, some with rope, some wading in the water, I just felt very, very sad about the whole situation, and said, “This is not what Jamaica is about.”  And today we are restoring the dignity of the people around the area who rely on the bridge.

It also restores the confidence of the people because sometimes, as I could have picked it up from the very rousing applause when, I don’t remember who said it, “You must not forget the rural communities.” I think it’s Mikael who said it and endorsed by Minister Morgan claiming his rural heritage, because there are oftentimes rural communities feel forgotten. It’s a loss of dignity, a loss of respect, a loss of confidence and let me assure you, your government does not forget the rural communities. What the government is trying hard to do is to rapidly integrate the rural communities into the nerve centres of economic activities and that means ensuring that you have proper roads to be able to connect, so you can move from here to Kingston, here to Falmouth, here to Montego Bay very quickly. You can choose to live here and choose to work elsewhere. You can move your goods from here to the markets where they will be sold quickly, that’s the idea.

We’re not forgetting rural communities, and the $230 odd million spent here is a symbol that you are top of mind and not forgotten, but many Jamaicans have asked a legitimate question over the years. If everyone agreed that the bridge was needed, why did it take so long? It puzzles me too as your prime minister because the then speaker of the house, who was the member of parliament for one side of the bridge took an unusual privilege in parliament as speaker to raise the concern, and I was about to write her a note to say that this was not usual protocol for speakers to use their chair to raise their constituency matters, but before I could pen the note, the member of parliament for the other side, Mikael Phillips, stood up and raised the issue as well so there was a bipartisan agreement that the Troy Bridge must be fixed.

But there is such a thing as procedure. I have been using the term bureaucracy. The question deserves an honest answer, right? And the answer lies in the systems governments use to ensure that public funds are spent responsibly. Over many decades, countries around the world learnt difficult lessons about poorly planned projects. Bridges were built without proper designs, roads were approved without adequate engineering studies, costs were underestimated, budgets were exceeded, projects were started sometimes even without financing, and taxpayers ultimately paid the price.

To prevent those mistakes, government developed systems of public investment appraisal. These systems require detailed engineering assessments, environmental reviews, economic analyses, procurement plans, fiscal evaluations, and independent approvals. These are not meaningless exercises. They serve an important purpose. They help to ensure that taxpayers receive value for money. They reduce waste. They discourage corruption. They strengthen accountability. They support sound fiscal management. And so as Prime Minister, I would never advocate abandoning these principles. Indeed, Jamaica’s hard-won fiscal stability has been built upon stronger discipline, better planning, and more responsible management of public resources.

But there is another truth we must acknowledge. Every system can become excessively rigid. Every safeguard can become overly burdensome. Every procedure can eventually create its own cost, and those costs are often invisible. When a bridge remains closed for years, there is a cost. When a farmer must travel farther to market, there is a cost. When a student spends additional hours commuting, there is a cost. When a business incurs higher transportation expenses, it costs you. When an ambulance or emergency vehicle faces delay, there could be a cost; it could be your life.

These costs do not always appear on the government’s balance sheet. They are not always visible to the technocrat or bureaucrat who is implementing the procedure. Yet these costs are borne by you every day. It is borne by the children trying to get to school, risking their lives, going down the slope, crossing the river. My challenge is that it is invisible to the people who are saying to the NWA, for example, “Go and do an environmental study, go and do an economic assessment of the bridge.” Everybody agrees the bridge is necessary, but the procedure requires an environmental assessment of the bridge that was here 152 years before anybody think of environmental assessment. The bridge was built to create the economy that is here, built long before, justified its existence. No need to say whether or not this bridge will create economic activity but yet, this project had to go through all of the procedures.

I can’t complain because ultimately it is the government that makes the law, and I want everybody to appreciate that the government can change the law as well. The requirements that is imposed upon the infrastructure projects sometimes cost more than the actual infrastructure construction. It doesn’t make sense. The time it takes to do study on top of study on top of study sometimes take longer than the actual construction work itself. And I tell you, there is a thinking in our country, don’t trust yourself, so double-check everything three, four times over before you do it. And two, if it never takes long, it wasn’t well done. It’s a culture that has embedded itself in our public bureaucracy. It has gone to the point where it appears as Jamaicans, we are afraid of success. We have allowed a certain school of thought to paralyze us.

When the colonial government decided after 1865 that they were going to build this bridge, they said build the bridge and with that, the bridge, the road, the irrigation, all of it was done. We as independent people, we can’t figure out how to build the bridge and still be accountable and transparent at the same time. Our bureaucracy must change.

Sometimes it is less effective at measuring the cost of not building quickly enough. I want you to understand that point. The system we have is quite effective at measuring the cost of building, but it is not effective at measuring the cost of not building quickly enough. It would have cost us at least 30% less if we had built this bridge four years ago. I want you to think on that. This is where reform becomes necessary.

The purpose of a process is to produce a result. Unfortunately, many of our bureaucrats and technocrats and some of our politicians and many in the civil society who criticize the work of government believe that the end of a process is another process and it has no regard for the suffering that you feel. The people who critique the government trying to move fast will never come here and hear your complaints. In fact, have you ever seen any one of them?

When the process itself becomes an obstacle to results, then responsible leaders have an obligation to improve the process. The objective is not to choose between accountability and efficiency. The objective is to achieve both, that is where this government is pushing towards; achieving both accountability and efficiency. The objective is not to weaken safeguards. The objective is to make our safeguards smarter. It would have been a much smarter application of the Public Investment Appraisal System if it was understood. A bridge was there before. The bridge was being used. The bridge supported an economy. No need to go back and do another test, another consultant. That is a smarter way of applying the rules, but when bureaucracies become self-serving, the objective is not to remove scrutiny. The objective is to ensure that scrutiny does not become paralysis.

This bridge teaches us that good governance must mean more than following procedures. Good governance must also mean delivering outcomes. A modern state must be capable of asking the necessary questions without endlessly delaying the necessary answer and this requires us to have a more mature national conversation. But when reforms are proposed to accelerate approvals, some of the same voices object. They demand urgency but resist change. They criticize delay but defend complexity. They speak passionately about process but rarely acknowledge the hardship experienced by the people waiting for benefits. The people of Troy did not need an endless debate. They just simply needed a bridge.

Empathy requires us to reconsider not only the risk of action, but the cost of inaction, and that is why this government is committed to reforming Jamaica’s bureaucracy. We are determined to modernize our public investment and approval system. We are determined to reduce duplication. We are determined to shorten approval timelines. We are determined to create accelerated pathways for critical infrastructure projects where delay imposes significant hardships on citizens because efficiency is not the enemy of accountability. That is why, ladies and gentlemen, we have created the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority, (NaRRA).

NaRRA will seek to structure projects, order them, cut unnecessary bureaucratic red tape, but at the same time gives a high level of accountability, transparency, and ensures the integrity of the processes. NaRRA will not only help us to recover from the hurricane and build resilience, but more importantly, NaRRA will show us that there is a better way to build Jamaica, there is a faster, more efficient way to bring infrastructure development to the people of the country.

This bridge stands as a symbol of resilience, but it also stands as a challenge to us as Jamaicans. You have been fed a diet by our intellectuals, our so-called thinking class, that you can’t trust your government, that everything that is being done, there is something hidden behind it. You have been fed a diet which says your government is incapable. As independent people, we need to shake that off, and we need to support the effectiveness of government. We must support governments that deliver for the people and this government has demonstrated. Not a perfect government, yes, there are problems, but you can rest assured that this government wants to deliver for you quickly and effectively.

I am certain that this bridge will last another 150 years or more, but for me, this is a turning point. We’re not going to allow critical infrastructure to be tied up in procedures and processes that satisfy procedures and processes and don’t deliver. Let Troy be a lesson to Jamaica. This bridge now stands as a symbol of renewal, a symbol of the importance of infrastructure in national development, and perhaps most importantly, a symbol of our determination to build a Jamaica where government works not only carefully, but effectively, not only responsibly, but urgently, not only according to process, but in service of the people.

Today, we reconnect communities. Today, we recommit ourselves to building Jamaica that delivers for every citizen. May God bless the people of Troy. May God bless the people of Trelawny and Manchester. May God continue to bless Jamaica land we love.

by

Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP

Prime Minister of Jamaica

at the

Handing Over Ceremony for Malvern Housing Development

on

June 4, 2026

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Thank you, Dwyane for your usual mastery of the ceremony.

Let me thank Reverend Father Olando Gayle for your thoughtful prayers.

Let me acknowledge Mr Franklin Witter, the Honourable Minister  of State in the Ministry of Agriculture and Member of Parliament for this fortunate constituency, and he is joined by Member of Parliament Andrew Morris from the adjoining constituency to give some support.

His Worship the Mayor Councillor Richard Solomon, the Mayor of Black River and he is joined by other members of the municipal corporation.

I see Councillor Simpson and Councillor Holness who is my cousin.

And of course, the National Housing Trust, the team that is always faithfully at these ceremonies. Let me acknowledge your Chairman Mr Linval Freeman and your Managing Director Mr Martin Miller.

Other stakeholders and representatives of the private sector

And let me specially acknowledge the beneficiaries, the persons who will be claiming this land as theirs and building on it. I’m so very much happy for you today.

And you would not mind me making special acknowledgement of the Hampton School. I want to commend them on the choice of entertainment of the song. We’ve been to events like these before, and we have seen cultural items presented, and we clap because we want to encourage our children. We see the effort that they made, but in the back of our minds, we wonder whether or not it was appropriate for the event. It met the standards that we all want to maintain, but this time, I can say genuinely from observation, the audience was satisfied that the selection was appropriate and delivered at the highest standard.

I’m pleased to be here in Malvern, St Elizabeth, for the handover of these serviced lots by the National Housing Trust. Today we handover land, but we are also handing over a foundation for families to build, to settle, and to grow on. A serviced lot is more than a plot of land. It gives a family a legacy to call their own. It gives them roads, drainage, electricity, streetlights, and the confidence that their investment is being made on proper ground, in a planned community with the basic infrastructure already in place. When a family begins to build here, they are not building into uncertainty, they are building into order.

For many Jamaicans, owning a home begins with owning land. It begins with a piece of Jamaica that they can call theirs, a place to build slowly. Some will build quickly, but whatever you do, build carefully and always build within your means. I’m surveying the audience to see the reactions of those who will be owning land here. Whatever you do, build within your means.

This is how wealth is built in real life; one lot, one title, one foundation, one family at a time. The Malvern subdivision is located about 15 kilometres southwest of Santa Cruz. It was originally developed by the Jamaica Teacher’s Association, and I see some representatives of the JTA here. I have a very long and strong relationship with the JTA. They are my good friends. This was originally developed by the Jamaica Teachers Association Housing Cooperative Limited and comprised at the time 108 residential lots. After the National Housing Trust assessed the infrastructure, it found that more work was needed to make the development suitable. The Trust then assumed responsibility for completing the infrastructure works, along with the 30 residential lots that remained available at the time.

After further assessment, the NHT reduced the number of serviceable lots from 30 to 27 because three lots had serious flooding concerns. Now, that was a responsible decision. Sometimes we see developments where the developers are well aware that there are concerns with the lots, and they still sell them, but you will not have that happen with the NHT because the NHT is a responsible developer and in an event it will come back to cost them because the NHT can’t run.

The NHT is always there so they have to make wise decisions, and so whilst there would be significant reason to make the three lots available, once we make a proper assessment that these lots will not serve the people who buy them, we’re not going to put them up for sale and so I want to commend the NHT for that. We cannot build housing policy on wishful thinking. We must build on sound assessment, proper engineering, and respect for risk. If land is likely to flood, we must say so. If a lot is unsuitable, we must accept that evidence. Families should never be encouraged to put their life savings into a place that may later be exposed to loss, damage, or distress.

Today’s handover is also a statement about standards. The works completed here include paved roadways with curbs, street names and traffic signs, storm water drainage systems, electrical distribution infrastructure, and streetlights. Martin, there’s no pool, no gym, no jogging trails, we’ll have to talk about that with the new homeowners. Obviously, these days, the recreation areas and jogging trails are becoming almost standard features for housing developments.

The development cost just over $100 million and that investment is visible on the ground beneath our feet. I want to recognize the project team, which would include the Rural Water Supply Limited, which provided pre-contract civil engineering support, Donovan Simpson & Associates Limited, they were the land surveyors, the NHT project management team, the NHT engineering and contract monitoring department, and the contractors who brought this development to completion. The public sees the ceremony, but the team lived through the long road that made this possible. The surveys, the approvals, the procurement, the supervision, the corrective decisions, and the follow through; that work deserves acknowledgement.

Now, to the selected beneficiaries, I offer my congratulations. Of the 27 service lots, one was reserved for special groups under the NHT’s Special Benefits Order, and 26 eligible contributors were selected. Almost 70% of those selected are women. Women in Jamaica frequently carry the daily weight of holding families together, planning for children, managing household costs, sustaining long-term goals even when resources are stretched. Housing gives that discipline somewhere to land. It converts quiet, consistent effort into lasting assets. It is fitting that this scheme reflects that reality in its beneficiary profile.

Now, the income profile of the beneficiaries also tell an important story. Five selectees qualified at 0%, and this is a point that I need to emphasize that the benefit of the NHT comes, yes, from its undertaking to develop land, it comes from the provision of a mortgage, but the more long-lasting effect is it allows persons who qualify to access a mortgage at 0%. That’s a huge subsidy. Five persons of the 26 will have a mortgage 0%. Five qualified at 2% and twelve qualified at 4%, and four qualified at 5%.

The benefit of the NHT, it’s huge when you compare it to commercial mortgage rates. That means that the majority of beneficiaries are receiving support at rates designed to keep the cost of ownership within reach, and that is what the NHT was created to do. It must serve contributors. It must help working Jamaicans move from rent to ownership, from uncertainty to stability, from aspiration to possession, and it must keep doing that, especially in rural Jamaica, in towns, in farming communities, in growing centres, and in places like beautifully cool Malvern.

Most of the selectees are between 41 and 60 years old. I’m looking at the selectees, and I couldn’t tell. They all look very young. Some may have wondered if this day would ever come, some have waited their entire life for this day, but today, your dreams are coming true. Important to note that four of the new landowners are between 19 and 35 and the beneficiaries, the occupants now represent Jamaica. They represent in terms of the livelihoods and professions. They are accounting, administration, clerical workers, teaching obviously, security, health, safety, housekeeping, childcare, and other forms of service. These are people who work, who contribute, and who are now getting their chance to own a piece of Jamaica.

St Elizabeth has long had a strong relationship with the National Housing Trust. Since its inception, the trust has delivered approximately 1,019 housing solutions in this parish across communities such as Elim, Lower Works, Rahime, Santa Cruz, New Market, Glencoe, Bellevue, Phoenix Park, Gays Land, Meadows, Appleton, Leeds, Balaclava, Balaclava Heights, and Brampton Manor, and that record will grow.

The NHT’s current housing plan for St Elizabeth includes six projects, including Malvern to be completed by 2031. Together, they are expected to bring approximately 1,993 housing solutions to the parish, and these include Friendship Oaks 1 with 256 serviced lots, Friendship Oaks 2 with 248 one-bedroom units, 59 two-bedroom units, and 443 serviced lots, the Holland Estate with 540 solutions, Luana with 360, and Kensington with 60. This handover is part of a larger programme of delivery in St Elizabeth.

Housing policy must do more than count units. It must create communities that last. It must support families who want to build steadily. It must give rural parishes a fair share of national investment, and it must connect housing with roads, drainage, water, electricity, safety, and access to services. The NHT has also been upgrading housing schemes. Under their scheme upgrade programme, 109 housing schemes have been identified across the country, and 60 have been rehabilitated so far.

In St Elizabeth, three housing schemes have reached practical completion with expenditure of 83 million Jamaican dollars. Lewisville in New Market received road rehabilitation works. Lower Works and Jerusalem also received road rehabilitation and general rehabilitation works, particularly to their drains. This work matters because communities must never be left to decay after the keys have been handed over. Government must assist in the maintenance, but the citizens, the residents, you who will become new homeowners, sometimes the perspective is, “I’ve paid so much for the house or the land, and once it’s finished, that’s the end of any expenditure on the house.” Nothing lasts forever. Concrete deteriorates as well. The paint will fade and strip. You have to constantly maintain your house in order for it to keep value. I say this again to those of you who will be homeowners here. Your plan must include maintenance of the structure that you build.

As I was driving in, I was very impressed by the community. It’s clear that in its heyday this was one of the top tier areas to live in. You could see the plan for the area, not to mention the lovely vista that you have of the sea, of the plain, and how cool it is, but clearly over time the verges have been left unkept, the fences have fallen down, persons have neglected to maintain their front yards, trees have been allowed to grow and get out of control, and I did pass a garbage collection truck on my way up. It passed me going down, so councillors there seem to be a service here.

I know I’m going to immediately be corrected that it is not adequate, it doesn’t come on time, it doesn’t come frequently. I will accept and appreciate that, but there is a service here, obviously, but it is clear that the level of maintenance of the community space, residents controlling their own waste and managing how it is disposed, it’s not sufficient to move the garbage from your kitchen and throw it on the roadside with no care of whether or not dogs or other animals will come and disturb this garbage and have it strewn and spread all over the place. And then you come out and you drive past it and say, “This is not my problem. This is the NSWMA problem or the parish council problem to come and pick it up.” That mentality must end in Jamaica.

I was expecting a clap of acknowledgement but i understand. I know, and I will never contest, we don’t have enough trucks to collect the garbage. We don’t collect it as frequently as we should. No one disputes that. We’re working towards that. Five years ago, we had 60 trucks. We made an investment to purchase over 100 new trucks, and we’re coming again with another amount so over time, we build it up, but does that mean that when you throw your garbage out, that’s the end of your responsibility?

Have our values as a society deteriorated so that we have become immune to a sense that when we see garbage strewn all around, it has an impact, a negative impact on us to motivate us to the point that we do something about it, or we just leave it there? And that is the concern that as your prime minister I have when we speak about the deterioration and degeneration of our values. Cleanliness and good public sanitation, it’s not just a matter for the government, it is a matter for each citizen. And not just in these communities, all across Jamaica we see waste all over. It didn’t just materialize. Somebody threw it there or someone was careless in how they disposed of it.

As you build your community, because this is now a new community with a new culture that can be rooted from the start, you must make a pact to ensure that your community is clean, that the road leading up to your community is clean. Your action, citizens action, the civic action is good and powerful instead of saying, “Why don’t you come and collect my garbage?” We know, we are working on that but let us properly containerize and properly dispose of our garbage.

We’re going to be building many lovely houses here but the beauty of the house, it is not just at your front door and inside, it’s not just the lovely tiles and bathroom fittings and chandeliers that you will have, it’s how the road looks coming into your property, how your verge looks, how your sidewalk looks and so as we celebrate home ownership here today, let us all commit to a new civic standard of personal responsibility in keeping our space clean, and this new community can have that culture rooted. And so I appeal to you, I implore you to consider that as you look towards your new home.

Let me thank you for your attention so far. I have another hour to go. There is a lot of talk about the NHT and the NHT being deprived of resources by virtue of the government extending legislation to have fiscal support for the budget from the NHT and I will repeat the point that I have made over and over again. The government does not take the funds from the NHT lightly. We understand what the resources are dedicated for, and were it not a situation that required it, the government would not have done it. And it is worth noting that the opposition did it and said the same thing, that the situation required it, and the situation does require it.

However, we must be clear that the funds that have been taken from the NHT have not impaired the NHT in its ability to respond and to deliver benefits for the citizens, and I want to make that absolutely clear. During the recovery process from Hurricane Melissa, the NHT has already processed and distributed over 5,078 home grants, that’s about 1.974 billion Jamaican dollars, each grant about 500,000 Jamaican dollars. One of the things I find very amusing as a politician is that if you could give 95 persons something, they could get a grant or get access to something, the 95 would say nothing, but the five who didn’t get will be louder than the 95 who got and so the impression would always be given that nothing was done.

I’m sure you have not seen one homeowner who has got the grant come out and say, “I have gotten the grant.” You’re not going to hear that, but I’m certain that you have heard people say they haven’t got the grant. The latest one that I have seen is someone saying, “Yes, I got the grant, but by the time they take GCT out of it and I have to pay transportation… I guess it is what it is.

It should be in the public domain that not just what the government has spent, which is almost over $60 billion already. The NHT has spent almost $2 billion on grants. The NHT gave six months moratorium on mortgage for 36,000 mortgagers in the affected areas; that’s huge. They didn’t have to pay a mortgage for six months, and I was just told that the NHT has waived the peril insurance premium that would be attached to the mortgage for the period of the six months. That’s huge again, but you’re not going to hear that. Nobody is going to make a TikTok video saying, “Thank you, NHT,” or “Thank you, Government of Jamaica.” You won’t hear that so that is why we have to have these ceremonies to put the information in the public domain so the public discourse can be balanced.

The NHT provided 213 special loans to persons who wanted to change their zinc roofs to slab roofs, and that was in the amount of 669 million Jamaican dollars; significant. The NHT has processed so far 3,835 insurance claims totalling 7 billion Jamaican dollars in claims. Of course, there is a deductible excess so even though the claim is for 7 billion dollars, there is a part of it that the insured will have to stand, and so you may end up paying somewhere maybe about 6 billion dollars or so in that region. The NHT has paid out of that claim 2.85 billion Jamaican dollars.

Now, they don’t make the payment all at once. The payment is staged, so effectively they have paid out almost half of the insurance claims, and I think this is a point that we should pause at because the NHT is a very good example of an entity acting swiftly. Insurance claims aren’t processed that quickly, but the NHT has done a very good job, and I want to point that out to the country and to challenge the private insurers for which claims have been made on them, and for which I have had many letters and people writing to me to say, “My insurers, they have come, they have assessed, but I can’t hear anything. Nothing has been paid to me yet. I’m still in the negotiation.” I believe that they should pay you very quickly. Paying up the insurance coverage, paying up the insurance is critical to the national recovery, so I want to commend the NHT for being quick in making the insurance payments, and I want to challenge the private insurers to speed up the payments on the claims. That is an important part of the recovery from Hurricane Melissa.

Another contribution of the NHT to the recovery is that NHT has spent over US$29 million to purchase 2,500 semi-permanent modular housing solutions. Yes, 1,200 of these housing solutions are already on the island, 300 will be here by Friday, and the remaining 1000 we expect to be here by July. These units will form the basis of the government’s response for persons who must be relocated from areas that have been significantly damaged or for persons who have lost everything and are not able to rebuild.

The NHT has identified five clusters, five areas in which these units will be deployed, and units that have to be deployed randomly across the island, those will be done through the Ministry of Economic Growth and Infrastructure Development. The NHT is also making a contribution to the building of the bases on which these semi-permanent modular housing solutions will be put. And I want to state it here; there was some concern that the Government of Jamaica did not spend $1.4 billion that was gifted to it.

Now, any accountant, anyone who understands finance will immediately look at that and say, funds are fungible so that shouldn’t be an issue in the public domain, but we make an issue of it. The government may not have used that $1.4 billion, but it spent almost $67 billion on all the things that people needed. We took a decision that the resources that were contributed would be matched with needs that are tangible, visible, traceable, meaningful, and lasting. We make no excuse for that, and that is what distinguishes my administration from administrations of the past. We make wise financial decisions.

Any donor who has contributed to the hurricane relief in Jamaica would be proud to see these homes being erected and the bases being pointed to. It’s quite different from saying, “Well, all of it was used to buy food” or given as a grant where nobody’s going to come up front and say, “I got it.” There is no testimonial. The house that is erected, it is there, it is visible, and it is very important that we do it because there are persons who are vested in trying to paint the administration in some way that the resources that were donated would not be used. Well, there you have it, the resources are accounted for, the resources are there, and you will see what the resources were used for. I thought I would use this opportunity to point that out.

These 2500 units will be deployed heavily, most of it, I think, based upon the needs. A large part of it will be deployed right here in St Elizabeth. Your brothers and sisters who are on the coast in Parottee, an area that was badly damaged which I toured, which is quite clear that the cost of reconstruction there would be quite higher than the houses that you’re trying to save so we have already indicated to the people of Parottee that that area has to be relocated, and we will do it in such a way that their livelihood will be preserved, the value of their asset will be preserved, but most importantly, their dignity will be preserved.

It’s not going to be an overnight process. It will be a process that involves them at every step. They can be assured of what we are doing. And so, the NHT, the UDC, the municipal authority, all of them will be working together and in this relocation, NaRRA will play a critical coordinating role in ensuring that everybody’s working on the same script and everybody’s working quickly to ensure that the people who have been dislocated will get the benefits. Some of these housing units will also go to the shelter in providing housing solutions for those persons who were in the shelter in Petersfield and so again, the NHT ought to be given some credit for supporting that relief effort of those citizens who were in the shelter for this very long time. Bases have already started to be constructed, and the houses will be deployed there. The NHT has also identified some clusters in Westmoreland as well. I believe two clusters, that you will be building houses using this semi-permanent solution.

Finally, the introduction of these housing solutions into Jamaica is going to be carefully studied. We want to see whether or not these solutions can be deployed widely and a financing mechanism can be used for them. I have an inner-city constituency, and I well understand the need for housing. There might be a family of seven, the son grows up, becomes an adult and he wants his own room, he goes and he buys a couple sheet of ply, some two-by-four and some zinc, and he finds a little place, and as we say, he kotch up, and that becomes his home. But multiply this all across Jamaica, and then you begin to see what Jamaica looks like. It’s not aesthetically pleasing, it’s not secure, it’s not resilient, and you can’t really claim to have an asset. But more than that, it can’t be financed. He couldn’t go to a bank and say, “Lend me on this” but if we were to find a building solution that is within the price point of persons who can’t afford some of these other structures, and a financing plan could be put beside it, then we could start to change how Jamaica looks as people begin to seek housing solutions.

We’re going to be studying it very carefully. There are some issues. People have said that when these have been deployed,  it creates trailer parks and all kinds of things, but there are other models where they have worked, and we can ensure here that it works so we will be carrying out not just engineering and architectural studies on it, but we are going to look at the sociology of it. How are people’s lives changed, how are people’s behaviour changed by having access to these kinds of housing? We’re going to study it and then see if it can be rapidly deployed.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have been such a wonderful audience. Thank you for listening to the NHT lecture.

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Allow me to acknowledge your minister, the Honourable Desmond McKenzie, Minister of Local Government and Community Development, and other members of the Cabinet who are here.

Let me specially acknowledge as well the Minister of Finance who is here,

Minister Donovan Williams

Mrs Natalie Neita Garvey, Member of Parliament and Spokesperson on Local Government representing the Leader of the Opposition

Mrs Marsha Henry Martin, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development,

Chairmen of municipal corporations who are here.

I notice the Mayor of Kingston and St Andrew is here, and I also did not see our Minister of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Honourable Alando Terrelonge. Normally I would be used to you at the head table, sir. I was about to mention that you are in bad company.

And Member of Parliament Damion Crawford.

I’m surprised by the very high level of government representation that has turned up today. I’ve been to other events where I scarcely see any government or opposition representation, but it shows you how important you are, and I take that as a very good sign. It’s good to see all of you here.

Mr Omar Sweeney, Chairman of the National Solid Waste Management, and other board members who are here.

Mr Audley Gordon, Executive Director of the National Solid Waste Management Authority,

Awardees and other members of staff of the NSWMA and the MPM

Representatives of the media,

Ladies and gentlemen, it is indeed a good evening.

I am pleased to join you for this Long Service Award ceremony. Today, we honour workers who have given 15, 20, 25, and 30 years, and more, to the service of Jamaica. Some of you have spent most of your adult life in this work. You have worked before sunrise. You have worked in the rain, in the dust, in the heat. You have worked during floods, during hurricanes. You have worked through disasters, through difficult years when resources were short, and the recognition was even shorter. You have worked when the country noticed, and you have worked when the country forgot to notice, but I also want to say clearly your government sees you, your Prime Minister sees you, and today, on behalf of every well-thinking Jamaican, I say thank you.

Public sanitation is among the most essential public service in any country. I want to emphasize that word, essential. It is sometimes used casually, but here it is used precisely because if you stop, everything else stops. The markets cannot operate, and the tourists begin to complain, the hospitals face higher burden, and the country smells of neglect.

Public sanitation protects public health. It protects our children, it protects our schools, our homes, our businesses, our tourism product, but most importantly, our national image. A visitor may come to Jamaica for the beach, the music, the food, or the warmth of the people but they will leave with an impression of our country if your work is not effectively done so the work you do has significant national value. It has economic value, it has health value, but it has human value; it speaks to the dignity of the country. That’s what it comes down to, the dignity of us as a people, and that shows how important your work is.

For those receiving awards for fifteen years of service, you are now among the firm foundation of this organization. You have stayed long enough to know the work like the back of your hand. It is now in your bones, as they would say, a part of you. You have seen the pressure, and you haven’t cracked under the demands. The early mornings and the hard days, you are stronger for it.

For those at twenty years, you have given consistent service across seasons, administrations, disasters, and changes in leadership. Institutions survive because people like you keep turning up. To put it this way, if tomorrow all the people who served twenty years or more decided, “I’m not coming to work,” and I’m not encouraging that, the organization would be crippled, and in fact, it would be very difficult to recover because you represent the experience of the organization.

For those at 25 years, you are the experienced leaders. Whether your title says it or not, younger workers learn how you carry yourself. They learn from you. They watch how you solve problems. That is, they watch how you use experience. They watch how you speak to residents. They watch how you treat the equipment, the team, and the task. You are teaching even without knowing it, and that teaching shapes the organization.

And for those at 30 years and beyond, you are institutional pillars. You helped to build the NSWMA to what we know it as today, and in fact, many of you would have started under MPM. Some of you served before the fleet was what it is now, before the systems are what they are now, before the country had a fuller understanding of how central waste management is essential to national life. Your service built this organization.

Long service also tells us something about character. It takes discipline to remain. It takes sacrifice to serve. It takes loyalty to give decades of your labour to work that is demanding and too often underappreciated. Many of you who have families who have also carried the weight of your service. They have adjusted to your hours. They worried when you worked through storms. They understood when duty called so today, I also salute your families. Their support helped to make your service possible.

And the government’s duty is to respect this sacrifice in practical ways, and that is why we continue to support greater stability in the sector. Permanent employment matters. And just before I came up on stage, I sought an update from your executive director, and I asked him how many workers have now formally been made permanent on the staff of the NSWMA and he says, “Well, you know, the commitment is to ensure that all who qualify are made permanent, but up to today, over two thousand employees have been made permanent” so it’s not just talk it’s substance and it is a genuine show of how much we value and respect you. It gives workers a stronger footing. It gives families more certainty. It keeps experienced people inside the system. It builds the capacity of the institution. A country cannot run essential services on uncertainty. The people who keep Jamaica clean deserve dignity in work, they deserve fair treatment, they deserve the chance to plan their lives, support their children, and retire with pride. We have also been working to improve the tools available to the NSWMA.

Over the years, the government has supported fleet expansion, including new compactor trucks, motorcycles for enforcement officers, and pickup vans for fleet and enforcement operations. And after the recent hurricane recovery demands, ten new tipper trucks were provided in December to strengthen emergency response and cleanup capacity. That investment matters because waste management becomes even more urgent after a disaster. Fallen trees, broken furniture, damaged zinc, spoiled goods, blocked gullies, and bulky waste can quickly become a second emergency after the first emergency has passed. Jamaica learned that after Hurricane Melissa.

Recovery is about roofs, it’s about water, electricity, healthcare, and schools, but it is also how quickly we can clean the community and remove debris because it becomes a health risk, and it also blocks connectivity, traps communities, breeds vectors, and therefore a strong health risk. And therefore, what we learned after Hurricane Melissa is that we have to develop the capacity not just to deal with everyday municipal waste, but to deal with the debris that a massive hurricane can generate and we had to deal with it and deal with it very quickly, and I want to commend the NSWMA for how they have managed to remove the debris. And we saw that in operation in Black River specifically, where the entire town and corridor to Black River was cleaned. Again, commendations to you and your team.

The NSWMA sits right at the intersection of national recovery and the hurricane response. In fact, the NSWMA is a first responder to the disaster. As we enter the hurricane season, preparedness must now guide action. This week, the NSWMA launched Operation CALM. Yes, another acronym but acronyms are important to quickly convey a particular strategy or effort. Yes, we are always launching operations to expedite sanitation efforts or to clean. Almost every year we have a bulky waste removal exercise, and I can tell you, being a member of parliament myself that we do a bulky waste exercise in our constituency maybe three times a year and maybe a week after it was done, it is as if it was never done.

You know that we will clean today. We will send out notices that the truck is coming. Residents will put out their bulky waste. We will go through, we’ll clean up, and you feel good, and yes, we have done the cleaning, and then the very next day, on the same road, someone else will come and they will put out a couch, a TV, or they will call you and say, “MP, why you never send the truck?” That time they know the truck came and all, but the strategy is to turn it around on you and then you say to them, “No, but the truck came.” And they say, “But MP, I didn’t see it. Send it again.” You know it because you are the ones we have to call and say, “Go to this housing scheme,” or “Go to this road.”

The NSWMA has launched Operation Calm, an effort aimed at clearing flood-prone communities of bulky and solid waste, advising residents of their responsibilities, using community leadership networks, and maintaining a visible presence in those communities throughout the season. This is born of the learnings; the experience of Hurricane Melissa so let’s not wait until the flood takes the debris and deposits it in the drains and roadways. Let’s try and clear the debris before the floods come.

An important part of the operation is advising residents of their responsibility, so there will be a significant public education campaign attached to Operation Calm. That is the right approach. Preparedness saves lives. A blocked drain can flood a home; a pile of waste can become a hazard; a community that waits until the rain starts has already lost time. So, I urge citizens to work with the NSWMA to put outside the waste from your home in a proper fashion. And I have noticed in almost all communities across Jamaica, from inner-city communities to upscale communities, that somehow the residents feel that once they have taken the waste pass their gate and they have left it in a container or tied in a bag outside their gate, it is no longer their responsibility. It’s the strangest thing.

You will drive through a community, and you will see the most well-appointed house. The best manicured lawns, the well put together buildings but very little attention paid to securing the waste that they have disposed of. It is left at the mercy of stray animals, of the wind, of persons of unsound mind to take that and to have it strewn all over the streets, plastics are allowed to be thrown everywhere; and then, of course, the view is that the NSWMA will come and clean and collect all of this, because that is the role of the sanitation worker. Yes, it is the role of the sanitation worker to clean the streets, pick up the garbage, but it is your civic duty to ensure that your waste is properly bagged and securely contained where it cannot be disturbed and create a further public nuisance or health nuisance.

Now, I already hear the retort, “It’s not my fault the truck didn’t come,” or “It’s not my fault, I did my part. I put out my waste, but the truck took so long to come that the cat got to it”. There has to be a national conversation about how we treat the public space, particularly in how we dispose of our domestic and municipal waste. Yes, without question, government cannot argue the point that we don’t have trucks enough to cover the entire Jamaica. The trucks don’t come on schedule and on time; we can’t argue that point. We don’t have sanitary landfills. We don’t have enough transfer stations; we can’t argue these points, but it is precisely because we don’t have the resources, it is precisely because the government is short on the resources that citizens have to do much better in how they control, contain, and dispose of their waste. It is not therefore an excuse.

There are laws regarding the duties of citizens to properly dispose of their waste. The fines are very low, and there is rarely any enforcement, but as we move into a new dispensation of orderliness in Jamaica, let me assure you that that will have the attention of the government. The strategy for order has never been fully articulated in the way I’m about to do it now, but the first line of effort in the strategy of order is to bring violent crimes under control, and the ultimate violent crime, which is murder, and that strategy has worked very well.

Today, our murder rate is the lowest it has been in over thirty years and we have been doing that for four years now so it’s not a one-off event. It is a strategy executed almost now for a decade, which is bearing fruit That strategy is then followed up by order in public spaces, and the first line of effort in that strategy is to get order in traffic. And we have passed a new Road Traffic Act, and I know there are many complaints about the enforcement of the police, the adjustments that have been made in the ticketing system, and the courts have been far more active in prosecuting road and traffic incidents and we’re seeing good results. We have improved the ability of the police to issue tickets, and they issue hundreds of thousands of tickets per year.

The next line of effort is to address the disposal of waste in public spaces, particularly travel waste. People in moving about their business, how they dispose of the waste. When you’re finished drinking your favourite juice, do you hold the bottle until you see a receptacle, you dispose it there? Or do you immediately just throw it on the ground or throw it through the window of the car? Is it an excuse that there is no receptacle and therefore you have to throw it down anywhere?

We’re going to be tackling this business of travel waste, and the same system that has been developed for ticketing road traffic offenses is going to be the same system with some modifications that will be used to ticket persons who are improperly disposing of their waste in public spaces. I’ve been at these platforms long enough making these controversial statements long enough to know when they are not immediately understood or accepted because in the back of everyone’s mind is, could I be punished? Could I fall victim to this? Does this mean I could get into a confrontation with a policeman because I threw my bottle on the road?

Unfortunately, yes. But it also means that you could now change your behaviour and keep that bottle with you until you have an appropriate place to dispose of the waste. The society can’t improve unless we all agree to change our behaviour, and it is the last thing for me to want to do to stimulate behaviour change by enforcement of some punitive action. We would much rather stimulate behaviour change by reasoning with you, as I’m doing now, pointing out to you that your behaviour is inimical to your own interest, and that if we agree to change the way in which we behave, the quality of life that we experience would improve.

So, I am not here threatening greater penalties; that’s not what I’m doing. What I’m trying to do is to get you to think about how we can achieve the better Jamaica that we all want. Unfortunately, sometimes when we speak about the better Jamaica, it is as if the better Jamaica is going to happen to you by some miracle and not you creating the better Jamaica by changing your action.

I hope I have stimulated some thoughts on that. These things don’t get covered or carried in the media because they’re not controversial maybe enough or newsworthy enough, but these are the important things that should occupy our news space. These are the things that are far more important to the life that we enjoy, the simple thing. Can you imagine if every child, if every taxi operator, if every motorist, every cyclist, everyone in the market were to decide without any form of enforcement that I am not throwing my plastic bottle on the street, I’m going to wait until I find an appropriate place, how much cleaner Jamaica would look without the expenditure of one additional dollar?

The question is, how do we get this done? It has to be public education, and it has to be a bit of enforcement. And there are those who feel it will never happen until they go to other countries and see that other people do this second nature quite naturally, that other people would feel offended if they saw their friend, their neighbour, their relative do that. They would stand up and say, “Don’t do that”. It tells what has happened to our society, that it has become normalized to throw our waste in the public space. It’s no longer an indignation to us and that is what we have to do when we say we need to change the values of the society because it was not always that way in Jamaica. Bits of paper lying on the ground, pick them up, pick them up; that was the basis of it starting in our schools with our children. Our parents couldn’t see us do that and not say anything but now nobody says anything, so we need to get back to that time when cleanliness was seen as next to godliness.

Clean communities require partnership. No agency, however, no matter how well-led they are, can clean a country by itself. Its citizens are important to any effort to clean the country. Public education is therefore an important part of public sanitation. Behaviour matters, awareness matters, enforcement matters as well, and as I said, the law must have teeth because the careless actions of a few cannot continue to endanger whole communities.

So, to the management of the NSWMA and MPM Waste Management, I thank you for the work you are doing to strengthen the organization, support your teams, and improve service delivery. Expectations are high, the public is often impatient, nevertheless, you must continue to raise the standards.

To the awardees, today belongs to you. You are the backbone of public sanitation and public health in Jamaica. You are among the workers who make ordinary life possible. Your work may begin in the streets, but its effects reach the hospitals, the schools, the hotels, the boardrooms, and our churches.

In fact, your work supports the entire economy. I want every awardee here to leave with a full sense of pride. You chose service. You stayed the course. You helped to keep the country clean, safe, and functional. The government will continue to support the NSWMA and its workers. We will continue to support better systems, better tools, and stronger workforce stability, and we will continue to affirm the dignity of your labour because every honest worker who serves Jamaica deserves respect.

Congratulations and thank you.

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 Thank you, master of ceremony.

Let me thank our hosts, Rear Admiral Cassidy Norman and Commanding Officer Joseph Furco, and other members of the command team of the USS Nimitz.

The Leader of the Opposition,

Members of my Cabinet,

Chargé d’Affaires Scott Renner,

Members of the Diplomatic Corps,

Other specially invited guests,

All friends, this is a good evening.

It is a pleasure to be with you this evening aboard the USS Nimitz here in Kingston Harbour. Indeed, I dare say that this may be the first time that a Jamaican prime minister has stood onboard a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier docked in Kingston Harbour, but I could easily say I believe it’s the first time a prime minister of Jamaica has stood on a aircraft carrier anywhere. On behalf of the Government and people of Jamaica, I welcome Rear Admiral Norman, Captain Furco, and the men and women of the USS Nimitz to Jamaica.

Every Jamaican knows that Kingston Harbour is the seventh largest natural harbour in the world. Some of us may have doubted whether or not a US aircraft carrier could be docked here in Kingston Harbour. Well, we are the seventh largest natural harbour in the world so yes, we can host the largest ships. It is deep enough to receive the largest vessels afloat and situated at one of the most strategically consequential points in this hemisphere within reach of the Panama Canal, positioned between North and South America, and at the intersection of the major maritime corridors linking Americas to Europe, Asia, and beyond.

Jamaica is, at its core, a maritime nation, even if most of us don’t always think that way, but yes, we are a maritime nation. Every barrel of fuel that powers our economy, every container moving through our ports, every ton of food that supplements what we grow, all of it depends on safe open sea lanes and our ambition is explicitly tied to this harbour and these waters.

Jamaica’s ambition is to become the logistics hub of the Americas, the premier node connecting global supply chains between the continents, a gateway comparable in function to what Singapore, Dubai, and Rotterdam represent in their respective regions. That is not a distant aspiration. It is an active national strategy with infrastructure, legislation, and investment already in motion.

That ambition, however, can only be realized if the maritime space is secure and the same geographic advantages that make Jamaica attractive to commerce also make these corridors attractive to those who would seek to exploit them for other reasons. Transnational criminal networks use these same sea lanes. They move firearms, and it is those firearms that have fueled gang violence that would have cost us so many Jamaican lives. They move narcotics. They probe every gap in maritime surveillance, every seam between jurisdictions. These are not abstract threats. When a weapon is intercepted at sea, it is a weapon that does not reach a community in Kingston or Montego Bay or Spanish Town.

Jamaica has been deliberate and strategic in building the partnership that address these threats. Through our cooperation with the United States Southern Command, the United States Navy, the United States Coast Guard, and other law enforcement partners, we have developed real operational capacity in intelligence sharing, maritime domain awareness, joint interception, and the training of our own forces. This is not security that happens to us, it is security we have worked to shape as sovereign partners with our own analysis, our own interests, and our own judgment.

I want to say something about the nature of that partnership because it matters. Small island states in the Caribbean are sometimes spoken about as if geopolitics is something done to them rather than something they participate in. That has not been Jamaica’s experience, and it is not our posture. We engage with the United States as equal partners with shared interests, maybe not identical interests, but substantially aligned ones. The basis of that relationship is mutual respect, operational trust, and a clear-eyed understanding of both sides of what we each bring to the partnership. That is the foundation on which it operates and the foundation on which it will continue to operate.

The USS Nimitz is here as part of Operation Southern Seas. The presence of this vessel is a signal that the United States takes this hemisphere seriously and takes its partnerships here seriously and our being on this ship here tonight is a clear signal of the value we each place on this partnership.

Maritime partnership means much more than security operations. When Hurricane Melissa struck last October, the capacity to respond quickly, to move supplies, restore communication, and coordinate relief was also a function of a maritime space through which regional and international partners could provide logistical and operational support. And here, I would like to thank the United States for supporting Jamaica’s recovery and humanitarian efforts, particularly with airlift capacity.

As climate risks intensify in the Caribbean, this dimension of our partnership will only grow in importance. A secure well-governed maritime space is the precondition for everything else we are trying to build. To the sailors and officers of the USS Nimitz, the work you do is largely invisible to the people who benefit; that is the nature of effective deterrence. There is no press conference when a threat is quietly neutralized, no headline when the sea lane stays clear; not these days, however, we see it nonetheless, and we are grateful for it.

I’m also told that among the crew of this vessel are many women and men of Jamaican heritage, Americans who carry Jamaica with them in their names, their families, and their stories. To you especially, welcome home. You represent something important about the ties between us, between our two countries, ties that are not only governmental or commercial, but human and familial, running across generations and across the waters. We are proud of you. I hope that all of you, whatever your background, will have the opportunity while you are in Kingston to experience the warmth, the culture, and hospitality that Jamaicans are known for, because Jamaica, like most things worth knowing, is better understood close up.

To Rear Admiral Norman and Captain Furco, thank you for the spirit in which you bring this vessel into our waters. To Charge d’Affaires Renner and the team at the United States Embassy, thank you for the consistent substantive work of keeping this relationship grounded in practice, not just in principle. The relationship between Jamaica and the United States is broad and longstanding, built on shared history, family ties, trade, and the movement of people between our countries across generations. We value it and we intend to keep building on it.

To my Jamaicans here this evening, look around you. The USS Nimitz is the lead ship of its class, one of the largest vessels ever constructed, and to my knowledge has never before docked in Jamaican waters. I cannot say when or whether such an occasion will come again, so let this moment register. Take in the sheer scale of what surrounds us and let yourself feel what it means to have this vessel here as a symbol of friendship and partnership from our longstanding close and critically important neighbour in the region, United States of America.

God bless you all.

by

The Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP

Prime Minister of Jamaica

at the

Ministry of Labour and Social Security

Dedication & Naming Ceremony The Portia Simpson Miller Building

on

May 26, 2026

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 Thank you, Auntie Fae.

Leader of the Opposition,

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen in the audience and listening to us through the various media.

Today we gather in a spirit of respect, remembrance, and national gratitude to honour the life and service of a former Prime Minister, the Most Honourable Portia Lucretia Simpson-Miller. We are here to honour a Jamaican whose public life has been defined by perseverance, compassion, courage, and deep connection to the Jamaican people.

The Ministry of Labour and Social Security occupies a special place in the life of our country. The ministry stands at the point where work, dignity, protection, and opportunity meet. It deals with the worker seeking fair treatment. It deals with family in need of support. It deals with the pensioner who depends on the assurance that the state will not forget them. It deals with the employer, the trade union, the vulnerable citizen, the person with disability, the seasonal worker, the injured worker, and the Jamaican who simply wants a fair chance for a better life.

For that reason, it is fitting that during Workers’ Week, this building at 1F North Street should be dedicated in honour of the Most Honourable Portia Simpson-Miller. Her journey is well known from local government to Parliament, from ministerial service to national leadership, and ultimately to becoming Jamaica’s first woman Prime Minister.

Portia Simpson Miller broke barriers that stood for far too long, but her significance does not rest only in the offices that she held; it rests on the people who she inspired to dream. She made many Jamaicans feel seen. She spoke to communities that were often ignored. She brought to national life a language of care, a presence, and solidarity for the poor, the worker, the woman, the elderly, and the vulnerable. She understood politics not only as policy and administration, but as ultimately human contact.

Her service in labour and social security was therefore pivotal to her career and central to her outlook. She understood the worker who would leave home before dawn. She understood the woman holding a household together. She understood the young person trying to find a path. She understood the elderly citizen seeking dignity after years of contribution. These were not abstractions to her; these were the people she carried in her public life.

Under her watch, Jamaica’s labour programmes expanded opportunities for Jamaicans at home and abroad. These programmes did more than place workers overseas, they opened doors, they supported families, they sent children to school, they helped to build households, they connected Jamaican labour to international opportunity while reminding us that our people remain our greatest asset; that is an important part of her legacy.

The dignity of labour was a practical concern. It was about whether a worker could earn, whether a mother could provide, whether a family could have a chance to advance, whether a Jamaican, regardless of background, could believe that the state recognized and valued their worth. The naming of this building in her honour is therefore a proper tribute. It recognizes not only the former prime minister, but the servant leader whose political life was rooted in people. It recognizes a woman who rose through institutions that were not always easy for women, and who, by rising, widened the path for others. It also carries a message for the present.

When we name this public building after Portia Simpson-Miller, we are asking those who enter it to remember compassion, inclusion, resilience, and service to ordinary people. We are not asking them to remember that government is not an abstraction. Government is experienced at the counter, in the office, through the phone call, through the form, through the pension payments, through the programme that gives workers a chance.

For many Jamaicans, the Ministry of Labour and Social Security is one of the most human faces of the state. It is here that policy meets real life. It is here that a citizen comes not with theory, the abstraction, but with a need that is real, that is urgent, that is critical; as we say in Jamaica, oftentimes life and death and that is how our citizens expect to be treated. It is here that the values of fairness, caring, and efficiency must be made visible.

This dedication should therefore instruct us that public office must remain connected to the lives of ordinary people. It instructs us that social security is not charity. We’re not doing anybody a favour. It is a duty and oftentimes a right. It is part of the basic architecture of a just society. It instructs us that labour and social security policy is not just paperwork, but it is lives, and this is how we build our nation.

A couple months ago, I had a call with former Prime Minister Simpson-Miller’s husband, and I’m not going to discuss what we discussed. I’m not going to say that here because it was in confidence and in privacy but I want to give an assurance that the Western Children’s Hospital, which Portia Simpson-Miller went to China, negotiated with the Government of China, came back to Jamaica and announced it, that it is only proper, and there was never any other intention. I see some campaign going on all over the place. We are a country that everyone likes to campaign about something, that’s fine, not arguing about that but governments can’t always say everything upfront all at once. We have to wait until appropriate timing and so forth so sometimes our timing may not coincide with other timelines and ambitions and issues, whatever it is. It was always the intent, and I had expressed that directly to the family, and internally we had also discussed it, and I may even had said it in passing in interviews, which probably was not picked up at the time, that the hospital should be named, it is only the right thing to do, it’s appropriate that it should be named in her honour, and it will be done. We were just waiting until the hospital was finished and ready, which would have been the appropriate time to say that, but it is what it is.

It may have also escaped the media and other commentators that there was such a place as the Portia Simpson-Miller Square in Three Miles and when I became prime minister, Mama P was my mother, she usually called me her son. And then I don’t know what happened, she disowned me, but we made up afterwards. She’s always in my heart, and we’re always good friends. My mother actually worked in the ministry when she was minister for many years, and they got along very well. My mother always talks about her, and she always talks about my mother, so we have some connections there.

When we were doing the road programme in the corporate area, we removed the square and I just want to assure the members of her constituency, which adjoins my constituency, that it was never the intention to eliminate Portia Simpson-Miller Square and so when we put up the overpasses, the intention was to rename those overpasses in her honour. We actually started some work to fix up underneath the overpasses and to paint it to make it look appropriate. We will continue that, and at the right time, we will rename that entire area including the overpass and the underpass. We’re trying to figure out if it should be the Portia Simpson-Miller Overpasses or… We haven’t found the right nomenclature, but we will find the right and appropriate way to name it.

This is about legacy and in a country like Jamaica where our democracy is so robust and everything is contested, you want your legacy to be cemented, literally. You want your legacy to be in concrete so it’s not challenged and it can’t be just toppled easily, even by powerful thoughts that may come afterwards, ideas and so forth. We take this seriously, and I want to commend Minister Grange. She has been on a campaign of putting up statues and memorials and all kinds of things and naming important iconic structures in honour of great Jamaicans.

Now, let me be clear, the legacy of Michael Manley and the NHT is not in challenge. And so, for those who interpret my comments in that way, please be at ease. But I find that in our general discussions about the history of Jamaica, we are not complete. We take elements of it that suit either our political outlook or our comfort, and the point of facts are these and it is related to this issue because it’s a general philosophy that workers’ rights must be protected. And based on that philosophy, as work became more structured, more organized, more urbanized, and more corporatized, especially coming to the end of the Industrial Revolution, workers had a literal limited lifespan, in that they would work for 20, 30 years maybe, and then after that they can’t work again. They’re out of the labour force because there are people coming up wanting jobs and then what do you do? There’s no pension, there’s no way for you to survive. The notion of pensions started, I believe, the leader of the opposition pointed out that it started with 1908 then 1911 the Social Insurance Act was put in and that was a good idea and it was replicated normally around the Commonwealth, as you pointed out, but it’s an idea that spread that workers would contribute to a pension centrally managed by the state, and employers would contribute as well and that system was established in Jamaica with the formation of the National Insurance Act.

Now, as Minister Grange pointed out, it was heavily fought. It just reminds me of NARRA. Heavily fought, and in fact, it was called SIN. They termed the third National Insurance Scheme and called it SIN and look at us today. That is what makes the Jamaican democracy strong. Don’t believe any foolishness you hear people writing. Jamaica’s democracy is strong because it was robustly contested, and that model inspired other models where workers’ contribution would be used.

For example, the idea of a social pension became the basis for the idea of socially financing mortgages; that is where the funding for a mortgage pool would come from, and the mechanism to take it out of the workers’ pay already existed through the NIS system. And so, what happened was that there was an amendment made to the NIS Act to use the exact system of collecting from both workers and employers to collect from workers and employers for the NIS and for several years, the fund that was collected and the collections were administered by the NIS. It was actually one and the same until, I believe 1976, that the actual NHT Act now created which separated the NHT and the NIS, and established now an institution and a law for the NHT.

Normally I would not go into this, but I think it is important for the record because there’s so many things being said that are not necessarily accurate, not necessarily true, not necessarily complete, and my job is to tackle some of these things that are not accurate to give a broader perspective on things.

So again, I want to commend Minister Pearnel Charles and Minister Grange for the leadership, and the staff of the respective ministries who have put on this lovely event and all who have worked on these Jamaica legacy projects. I must commend this is a lovely event. I particularly like the very brief documentary on Portia Simpson-Miller. And to the family and colleagues and admirers of the Most Honourable Portia Simpson-Miller, I say this: Jamaica recognizes the magnitude of her contribution. We recognize the doors she opened. We recognize the people she served. We recognize the example she set. We have commissioned a bust in her honour. Minister Grange may say something more. Well, at the appropriate time, you will inform the public of that, and there is also a documentary that will be commissioned by the government so we want you to know that we are in the business of preserving and promoting the legacies of our leaders, not to destroy or contort. We want the legacies of our leaders to be there for the posterity and benefit of the people of Jamaica.

May all who work in the Portia Simpson-Miller building be guided by her example. May this building stand as a monument to inclusion, perseverance, and people-centred leadership, and may Jamaica continue to produce public servants worthy of such honour.

I thank you.