Official Grand Opening of the newest KFC in Black River, St Elizabeth
Keynote Address
By
Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
At the
Official Grand Opening of the newest KFC
Black River, St Elizabeth
On
July 26, 2025
______________________________________________________________
Thank you very much, Debbie. You are indeed the master of ceremonies.
Let me thank Gaylean Skervin for her prayers. Thank you for blessing this event and interceding on our behalf.
Senator the Honourable Aubyn Hill, is a parishioner and he is a very strong advocate for St Elizabeth, and he may have gone a little bit ahead of himself in the advocacy, but it is only because he knows where my heart and head is in relation to the development of the parish and therefore, he was just speaking into being what we are planning for the parish.
Your homeboy, Floyd Green, Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining, and indeed a very good Member of Parliament.
Let me acknowledge Cetany Holness, representing His Worship the Mayor Richard Solomon
And then Mark Myers, Managing Director of Restaurants of Jamaica and Michelle Myer Mayne and Tina Matalon and other members of the Restaurants of Jamaica family and management team
Representatives of the public and private sectors who are here,
Partners, stakeholders and community members,
Representatives of the media.
And I must make mention of the security forces who have done an amazing job in keeping the parish and the town safe.
Good morning. It is always a joy to be in St Elizabeth, a parish of proud traditions, hard work, and endless opportunity and today in the historic town of Black River, we mark not just the opening of a new restaurant, but the affirmation of powerful ideas, that across Jamaica, even the smallest town, there are big opportunities.
Black River is a town of rich history. It was declared the capital of St Elizabeth in 1773, replacing Lacovia, and this was due to the fact that commercial and civic activities gravitated towards this town. So in effect, this town became the administrative capital and when they say the administrative capital, usually two things happen. One, it’s the most convenient place to collect taxes, and secondly, it was the meeting place of the local representatives.
Not to go into too much detail, but that is how parishes are usually formed so the history of Jamaica is that our parishes were connected to the Church of England and the Church of England would have, in terms of running the church, a vestry of pastors and it would be the literal pastors who conducted the business of the local governance of the area. Hence, we have parish councils, and wherever the lines of travel intersected and it became easier to collect taxes and to have those vestry meetings, and there was a church then that became a capital and indeed a parish.
So, the parish of St Elizabeth, the administrative capital, was first in Lacovia, but then as the parish grew and the trade routes, the commerce and where the civic activity took place, then Black River became the parish capital, and it has remained that way since. There are other towns that are emerging. MP, you mentioned a few of them, and for a while, even the residents of Black River felt that Black River was being outdone by Santa Cruz and Junction, but from what I’m seeing, just by observing, Black River is truly reclaiming its place as the parish capital.
It is said that, as you had pointed out, Floyd, this was the first place to have electricity. In 1893 the Waterloo House was the first place to have electricity in Jamaica, and I gather it was also the first place to have a motor car in 1903. So, today, we are pleased to open, I was about to say the 42nd store, but that’s not a real achievement. It’s the first store in the next 50 years of KFC, and that’s a big deal. But look, 42 stores is a huge operation and a $355 million investment in this town, another big deal, but I’m very pleased to say that this restaurant will provide 65 new jobs, and that is a big deal for all the households that will benefit.
Let me congratulate Restaurants of Jamaica, especially the Myers family, on this milestone. This occasion is even more special because it coincides with KFC’s 50th year of operation in Jamaica. Fifty years ago, Restaurants of Jamaica opened its first KFC restaurant at 170 Old Hope Road, and that was in 1975. A very different Jamaica then, but few would predict that it would be such a success 50 years hence, employing 3000 Jamaicans, 500 of whom have served the company for more than a decade, so your staff retention is exceptionally high.
I just popped in on their 50th anniversary staff celebration. It was a huge party, and you can tell when an organisation is doing well when the staff celebrate the organisation, and they were there in their numbers, very happy to be a part of an iconic brand. They didn’t see themselves as just employees; they saw themselves as a part of this family, a part of the business. And I think if there were ever to be a comment on the success of KFC, aside from the fabulous tasting chicken, it would be how the staff is a part of the success, and indeed, you could say it is chicken prepared with love.
I moved to tell this joke, but maybe I shouldn’t. I’ll share it with you privately. The KFC brand has woven itself into the Jamaican identity. I often hear people saying, and it was said here so many times, that the KFC in Jamaica tastes better than KFC anywhere else in the world, and I tend to agree. In fact, it does taste better than the ones I’ve tasted when I’ve travelled over the world, but that’s just how we as Jamaicans distinguish ourselves in what we do.
Now, aside from taking care of their staff such that the staff morale is high, and the staff sees themselves as part of the family and the business, and aside from producing an exceptionally well-tasting product, Restaurants of Jamaica has consistently gone beyond the profit to deliver purpose. That is what we mean when we say they are a trusted partner in Jamaica’s development, and you don’t have to look very far for evidence of them being a part of Jamaica’s national development.
KFC has been involved in the national reading competition and National Child Month activities. Year after year, they have been consistent supporters of that, and they have partnered with the Jamaica Library Service to create 14 Chicky reading rooms and homework centres, and these are safe, engaging spaces where children can dream, learn, and grow. And I remember as Minister of Education, you would recall that we opened one of those spaces in Portmore. This is almost 10 years ago, or more than that. They have contributed scholarships. I don’t need to say how often they do that, but recently they have awarded $100,000 in grants to 50 children of employees as part of their 50th anniversary celebration, but that is in addition to what they do throughout the years in scholarships.
They have the Add Hope programme, which was launched in 2018, which has contributed $50 million to feeding initiatives across Jamaica. They have donated $7.4 million to the Ministry of Education School Feeding Programme, feeding 3,500 students across 35 schools, and the same spirit of generosity has been seen right across Jamaica with the delivery of 1,500 meals annually to children’s homes across Jamaica, and they support a thousand vulnerable children. And I’m speaking now for my Prime Minister’s Christmas treat that I have, and I’ve been doing this for nine years, and KFC is always there supporting the children who we bring in from children’s homes and from all across Kingston and the corporate area in general. KFC has always been a stand-up sponsor of that event.
In sports, KFC has been a longstanding and consistent patron of our youth. They have sponsored the ISSA Schoolboy Football, youth basketball leagues, jump ball, and star search camps and other grassroots initiatives, tailored for tens of millions of dollars in support. These initiatives promote Jamaican sporting culture and help our youth discover discipline, leadership, teamwork, and resilience.
In culture and community, KFC has shown up again and again, whether supporting independence and carnival events, providing food to the homeless, or supporting churches through their annual harvest and these kinds of activities. KFC is indeed a true Jamaican company. They are more than just a brand. Restaurants of Jamaica is a partner in our national development, and on behalf of the people and Government of Jamaica, I want to say thank you, Restaurants of Jamaica.
So yes, we know it’s a big deal, but there may be some who are asking why is the Prime Minister coming all the way to Black River to open a KFC restaurant. Well, as I’ve said, it’s a big deal, but the answer is simple: we support investments. We endorse the $355 million placed here. We are very happy and we celebrate with the 65 staff members who are employed and who are now part of a 3000-strong employee base. We are very happy to be here because, as you look at the development, it helps to change the face of the town, and we are big on urban development. But make no mistake, every new investment, every new outlet means that the public revenues increase, and we get more taxes. I’m not seeing a big smile on Mark’s face, but that’s a point that has to be made.
Let me be clear on this. Everybody wants everything. We have done our polls. The number one issue across every constituency that we have polled, road and water. You have other issues: crime, unemployment, there are issues to do with youth involvement, but the number one issue for most is infrastructure. And a point that has to be made to all our Jamaican family members who are upset about the quality of the infrastructure that they have, the road that runs pass their gate in the community that is in a state of disrepair, the lack of water, and for some no electricity; the point that must be made is, first of all, infrastructure does not fall from the sky. It’s not free. It has to be paid for. Somebody has to pay for it. Who pays for it?
Well, every time you purchase something and you pay GCT, that goes into the tax revenues, your PAYE and income tax that goes into the tax revenues, your property taxes, that goes into the tax revenues, but the property taxes are kind of directed into some special activities to do with solid waste management and some limited maintenance of roads. And then fees when you pay for advertising fees, when you pay fees for licensing or whatever fees you pay, that goes into the revenues of the country.
Then there are some fees that we get: customs fees and so forth, that you don’t pay, but are paid when things are imported. There are some excise fees, not a lot. We get some of that, and then oftentimes the government does what is called distributions. The government will take revenues that government-owned companies earn and place it into the budget, so that’s just a very simplified profile of where the funds come from.
Now, if we don’t have enough of that, then we will have to borrow. Infrastructure is not forever. Granted, there are some infrastructure that would’ve lasted thousands of years. You would talk about the coliseum in Rome of the old Roman empire, there for thousands of years, relics of it, but generally, if you build a road, the maximum you will get out of it if you don’t maintain it is about 15 years.
So, firstly, for Jamaica, we don’t have enough revenues. Secondly, because everybody wants the road now and they want the water now, previous governments who did not run the economy well were forced to borrow. If you borrow, you have to pay it back, and you have to pay interest. Once you start to pay back the loan and you start to pay back interest, it means you have even less of your own revenues the next time around to invest in roads.
What has been happening to us over the last 50 years is that we have been borrowing, and then we take our revenues to pay it back, so you reach a point where your revenues are not able to support any more borrowing. Therefore, how are you going to build roads? You can’t borrow again to build the roads, and you have no revenues because you’re paying that back into debt, so road maintenance, water maintenance, to pay staff, all of these things stopped. That is what happened to Jamaica in the last three to four decades.
There are many communities there where people would say, ‘from mi born, my road has been in a state of disrepair.’ Yes, it’s true because the roads were built, they served you for 15 years, and then after that, because we have been borrowing, we have no revenues to maintain the road, to build new roads, to have the recurrent budget to pay the public sector wage bill, to fix the hospitals.
Our electorate has either deliberately or because they just don’t know disconnected the ability of the government to raise the revenues and to fix the roads. So the electorate only says, fix the road, but they have no concern. They don’t even want to acknowledge or reward a government that runs the economy well. That is not part of the political conversation, so what that does is set up a kind of politics where politicians don’t have to come and campaign on account for how they’re going to run the economy. All they have to say is, ‘yeah man, I’m going to fix the road’, and anybody who promised to fix the road, they are the ones they support not seeing that that is just a shallow, empty promise if they can’t also in the same breath make a commitment to run the economy well. That is what has kept us in this problem of poor infrastructure or high murders or poor healthcare, because the electorate is not holding the government to account for running the economy well, because somehow, they just believe that the infrastructure falls from the sky.
What we have been doing, and I certainly have been doing, is to make the connection that I want to see more investments like this because it is going to give more revenues into the government coffers, so that I can fix more roads without borrowing. So, I am here to send that message, and I don’t know why people are so upset with me cutting ribbons because that is what the government is supposed to do. We’re supposed to be doing these things. The more ribbons we are cutting, because you can’t cut ribbon for something that doesn’t exist, this is something that is real. The amount of revenue that is going to be generated here will help St Elizabeth because some of it is going to the parish council. Some of it is going to be collected at the collectorate here and in Kingston, and it will be distributed right around the country in the projects that you want.
So yes, that’s why I’m here, and I’m using the platform to make the point to the Jamaican people that the days of the disconnection between the wherewithal to deliver and the promise to deliver, this election should dispense with that. The new Jamaican voter must be seized of the important link between the economy and the road, the economy and the water, the economy and the hospital, because in our vernacular and unique way of expressing our political thinking, there are those who would say ‘economy can’t nyam.’
You see, when you unpack that, what does it say? “You talk about debt gone down, interest rates stable, exchange rates stable, inflation stable; that’s not KFC,” not knowing that without that, you can’t get the real deal, which is the paved road, the water, the hospital. Now, why is it that I’m able to cut so many ribbons when previous governments weren’t able to do that? It is because this administration has made it a point of duty to invest in the economy to give good governance and management to the economy and then to be fair and equitable in how the dividends from the economy is spread amongst the people.
My good friend from Guyana, Prime Minister Irfaan Ali, who is also in an election so I’m going to be careful what I say, we had a little discussion because I made a point before, which is that Guyana is distributing the dividends of the oil economy that they are now benefiting from, and they’re giving back which they should. There’s no reason why the government should keep revenues in surplus that they don’t need; they should give it to the people, and so they’re giving to every youngster support to do their examinations. They’re giving a cash transfer to households. I don’t remember how much, but they’re giving quite a bit substantial, just a give back and I took the opportunity to point out that we have not discovered oil, but we have given back through what is called our tax give back, our reverse tax credit; that if you earn below a certain threshold, I believe it is if you earn below $2 million thereabouts, you get $20,000 back. And I’m certain that many KFC employees would’ve gotten that back on their account if they applied for it.
We’re giving back under the Solidarity Programme, JMD$1 billion to 50,000 Jamaicans targeted. From hurricane Beryl, we have spent $5 billion giving back. Through the pandemic, we spent over $39 billion on just giving back through various support programmes. Did we discover oil? No. What did we discover? We discovered good management of the economy that created a dividend that we are using to address the needs of the people. The SPARK Programme, the 10 point odd billion dollars we’re spending on water; all of those things come from our economy, not to mention the school buses and the hundred new buses that we have brought in. All of that comes from our good stewardship of the tax revenues of the country.
And today, I want to point out that the government is not going to just stop at roads and water. We have a massive plan for the development of every parish in Jamaica. So, before we took a very strategic approach to spatial development. We laid a plan to build highways to go around Jamaica that will connect every parish capital and every major town, and you see that happening. You see the South Coast Highway Improvement Project coming closer and closer. We are now at Williams Field. We’re going to do another leg of that that will bypass Spur Tree, and then we’re going to do another leg that will end up here in Black River.
We have moved from Harbour View right into Port Antonio, and we have broken ground, and work has begun on the bypass of Port Antonio. We’re going to eventually extend the North-South Highway, the toll road, and that is going to bypass that congested area in St Ann, the Drax Hall area. We have laid out all of that plan so that eventually you will be able to drive around Jamaica comfortably in a day, nonstop on excellent roads, so everywhere in Jamaica will be connected easily. Within 12 hours, you should be able to get around Jamaica so that plan is laid, and that’s good.
The next plan now is to develop every parish utilizing its indigenous, unique and existing resources. We have already started the plan for St Thomas. We’ve put in the road, and we have built the urban centre. We’re now going to move into the housing element of the plan. We’re going to coordinate much better the mining element, the agricultural element, and we have a plan for the tourism element, so the parish of St Thomas, which we have said has been neglected for many years, that parish will have a booming economy. We have a 10-year plan for that. And of course, KFC is there.
We have a plan for Portland. We have hired one of the best architects and public space planners in the world, a Jamaican. His name is Andrew Gill, and they are right now developing the plan for Portland. Portland is going to become the most- I’m trying to find the right word for it, but there’s an island in the Caribbean here, St Barts, which is a very famous tourism destination, and so we want to pitch Portland in that vein in terms of a low-density, low-intensity, high-value tourism area. And so we’re developing Portland in that regard, but let’s jump over the other parishes because we have plans for all of them.
Now, for St Elizabeth, several years ago, I had mentioned that Jamaica needs to purpose build a city. We haven’t really purpose-built a city. We have never done it, certainly not since colonial times. Maybe Spanish Town was the only purpose-built city, and I had tasked the UDC to identify the area that would be best suited for the development of the third city. Two areas were in close competition, and I’m not going to say specifically where, because that is just going to unleash. You don’t want people to go and start to buy land and state claim, and then you can’t do what you need to do so we don’t give the details as to where, but suffice to say that the area that we have been advised is the best area to do an entirely new city and it is because all the requisite element to create a new city exists here. You don’t want to create a city that replicates Montego Bay and Kingston. You want to create something unique, and therefore, this parish, St Elizabeth, would be where we would be looking to develop our new city.
That’s a big deal, a big announcement, and you can now start to make sense of why it is that we are making certain massive investments in the parish, which would include the bypass for Spur Tree to go down, and then the bypass to get to here, which will effectively bypass Santa Cruz. It will involve the development of South Coast tourism because we have a product here that is really great, and we need to maximize that tourism product.
And then we have a massive investment in irrigating the plains here. We have launched the Pedro Plains Irrigation Project, which is now underway, so we’re focusing on the agricultural potential of the parish, and that will essentially take water from the Black River. But for this town of Black River, you have so much history, so many heritage buildings that it pains my heart when I hear that the buildings, some of them have been destroyed by fire and I would make an appeal to the residents of Black River, to those who own some of these historic buildings, if you know what I know, you would preserve those buildings because very soon they’re going to be exceptional in value.
Now, I was very instrumental in the approval for the medical school that is here. Something that we have not taken advantage of, but we should, is education tourism, and we’re going to target this part of Jamaica for that new industry, education tourism. So, in the next chapter of our development, in our new term that is fast approaching, you can look out for individual parish development plans that will be done in such a way that the residents participate in it, the stakeholders participate in it but you are going to see strategic and direct infusion of investments in such a way as to improve the quality of life of the people, to provide the infrastructure that they need, to create the business environment and ultimately to give the people the ability to live and work and earn where they live.
It is going to call for a new type of thinking of the local government representatives. It is going to call for a new type of thinking from the Chamber of Commerce and the business people, and this obviously must include the spaces where we all come and interact, the markets and town centres, because we’re going to have to restructure those areas as well. So, you can look forward to the bright future that we have always wanted because you have a government that is dealing with the economy in the proper way, and we are taking the resources from the economy to deal with the issues that you want to be addressed. And once you do that, then it supports an even stronger economy from which we can get more resources to deal with the issues that affect you, thereby creating the virtuous cycle of growth and development.
So, ladies and gentlemen, it was indeed my pleasure to deliver the KFC lecture, the Restaurant of Jamaica lecture on how to develop a town, a community, a parish, and a country.
God bless you. Thank you. Choose Jamaica.