Commissioning of new tanks and waterlines in Rhyne Park, St James
Keynote Address
By
Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
At the
Commissioning of new tanks and waterlines, Rhyne Park, St James
On
April 10, 2025
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Thank you, master of ceremonies Delano Williams, for your conduct of the program so far.
Let me also thank Pastor Hamilton for his invocation.
Let me acknowledge your hardworking Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation with responsibility for Water, the Honourable Matthew Samuda.
I am going to acknowledge the world-famous Minister of Tourism, but his substantive post that we acknowledge him for today is as the Member of Parliament for this area in St James East Central.
Your hardworking Mayor, His Worship Councillor Richard Vernon, Mayor of Montego Bay, and other members of the St James Municipal Corporation are here.
Mr Kevin Kerr and his team. Mr Kevin Kerr is the Acting President of the National Water Commission.
And let me acknowledge everyone else who is in the audience and the members of the community who are here. It is always a special occasion when we gather to celebrate real, tangible and meaningful progress in the lives of people.
Today’s commissioning of phase one of the Rhyne Park Water Supply Improvement Project is one such moment. This is not just an infrastructure upgrade; it is a powerful signal of this government’s commitment to inclusive development, to modern service delivery, and above all, to keeping our promises. Water is not a privilege. It is a human necessity and delivering that necessity is the responsibility of the government, and the government takes it very seriously, and this is why I am proud to say that over the last five years, we have invested unprecedented sums in water infrastructure across Jamaica.
As of this fiscal year, we can say that over 150,000 Jamaicans now have improved water supply because of our deliberate focus and sustained interventions. This level of investment has not been seen in water since the 1980s. Twenty-two billion dollars in public investments and $14.2 billion in private investments through public-private partnerships have been mobilized to build a modern, resilient, and equitable water supply network. The phase one works that we are commissioning today here in Rhyne Park are part of that national push, but they are also deeply local.
With an investment of $54.58 million, this phase has directly improved water supply for over 10,400 residents across 2,600 households spanning the communities of Rhyne Park, Barrett Town, Palmyra, Edmund Ridge, Little East, Spot Valley, Rosevale, Cornwall, and Mount Zion. So you see, this project, just phase one, will impact several communities through the installation of five relief pumps, upgraded power infrastructure, and newly constructed motor control centers. We have laid the foundation for a consistent, efficient water supply to these growing communities. These upgrades mean faster recharge times for distribution tanks, fewer trucked water deliveries and more reliable services to homes and businesses. But remember, this is only phase one.
Phase two, currently in the planning stage, is another bold and forward-looking initiative with an estimated cost of just under a billion Jamaican dollars. It will include over five kilometers of new 400 millimeters pipelines from the Martha Brae Trunk main to Rhyne Park, two brand new pump stations, new bolted steel storage tanks and advanced hydraulic modeling to optimize pressure and distribution. When complete, it will not only serve current residents, it will also future-proof this corridor for housing, tourism and commercial developments for decades to come.
I’ve just finished breaking ground for a new 1,500 housing development in Barrett Hall. A lovely place, extremely beautiful, and I’m sure that the people who are fortunate enough to be able to get one of those houses will thoroughly enjoy it, but what I’m pleased with is that they will not have a water problem. They will not have a water problem because between phase one and phase two, this entire corridor will be properly charged with water supply.
Now, this area, Rhyne Park, is part of a much larger transformation taking place across St James. Since last year, the NWC has invested more than $400 million across projects, including Moy Hall, Endeavor, Fairfield, Rosemount, and Railway Lane, in partnership with JSIF. We are also bringing modern water infrastructure to Norwood and Salt Spring and from Shettlewood to Anchovy, reaching thousands more.
Now, I know that the people in Shettlewood are a little bit disgruntled because the Shettlewood to Anchovy project has stalled a bit. They have started. They have dug trenches and laid some pipes but a few weeks ago I had visited a lovely community called Roehampton, and I keep telling this story that I was confronted by some residents and you know we can be assertive as Jamaican sometimes, and one resident asserted that if we don’t get any water, no vote.
And, of course, I have dealt with that already because you really should vote for water. That is what you should do. You should vote for water. You always have a diverse group of citizens, of electors, of residents, and there are some who will say, I’m withholding my vote. Some will say I’m changing my vote, and some will say “Prime Minister”, as one young lady did. She pointed out to me and said, “I am 33 years old, and in my lifetime, we never had water in the community.”
So, there is what I call the reasonable middle, reasonable people who stop and think and don’t act on emotions. She says, “Prime Minister, I work in a supermarket in Montego Bay”. I think she said she spent something between nine and $10,000 per truckload of water, and she has to do that maybe once a week, and that’s expensive. And so, whilst she appreciates that we have spent a significant amount of resources to bring the water there, the project having stalled would’ve dashed her hopes that in short order, she would have water in her shower because I know every Jamaican, when they go in the shower, they want to say ‘shower’ and so she would want to be able to do that but there is a challenge always with infrastructure as there was a challenge with the Shettlewood to Anchovy project.
And so, having had the admonition and the threat, but also moved by the reasoning of this young lady who for her lifetime never had water, who is expecting to have water now and seeing it delayed, I went back to my desk, and I mentioned it to Minister Samuda. The project was not only in the NWC; a part of the project is through the Jamaica Social Investment Fund, and with the lobbying as well of the Member of Parliament, Minister Homer Davis, we were able to resolve the issues facing that project. And I am told, just as I was sitting there, I received a note from the managing director of JSIF, and I’m hoping that this will be confirmed by the acting president of NWC, that by Monday work will restart with the transportation of pipes back to the site and the continuation of excavation and laying works.
So, if that young lady is listening now, I want to say to her it is because of you, not because of the threat of no vote or the threat of change vote, but because I understand. It’s not just sympathy, it’s respect. It’s not just trying to win votes. It’s about preserving the dignity of people. The truth is that when you talk to this 35-year-old lady, what she’s effectively saying is that my generation is expecting a different standard of living where water is expected to be in my house.
Now, not every house can have water, but at least we need to bring water close to you so that you have options as to how to get the water. And the truth is that this community is not such a remote area that we couldn’t bring water to them, and that’s the objective of the government. The objective of this government is to bring water to the vast majority of Jamaicans, and that bringing of water means we are going to make sure that there is a water main that runs close to your house. And if you live in an extremely remote area, then we have other solutions that we will put in place to help you to get water. But for a country like Jamaica, the water infrastructure, much of which was built out in the last 50 years, we not only have to go build new infrastructure, but we’re going to have to repair the old infrastructure that exists.
We’re doing the two things simultaneously, providing water for communities that never had water before, that’s new infrastructure, and we are upgrading, renewing and rebuilding existing infrastructure, and this administration, more than any other administration, has been doing this consistently and doing it cost-effectively and efficiently.
So, I want to commit to the Jamaican people that, yes, we understand the challenges you have with water, but I can’t bring myself to make wishful promises to you. I can’t bring myself to tell you that with the snap of a finger, water is going to be in every house overnight because that would be telling you that horses can fly. The sad thing, however, is that since we are in the promising season, there are many Jamaicans buying the promise that they will get a horse that can fly.
Nationally, we are now commissioning and breaking ground for new systems almost every week. The week before last, I was breaking ground for water in St Mary. A week before that, I was in St Elizabeth, and we keep doing it. We have so many water projects that the minister is complaining to me that he can’t get a time in my diary to break ground, commission or turn on. And you may be wondering why is it necessary to do these ceremonies.
Again, I need to level with the Jamaican people. In this battle for your minds, there are people who all they do is figure out how can they put misinformation in the public domain to mislead you. Now, two weeks ago, myself and Minister Samuda and the Member of Parliament for the area in Western St Mary, we turned on a water supply again in a community in Mason Hall. The community is over 250 years old, and they never had piped water in that community, so we laid pipes and made connections and installed pumps and all kinds of things so water is now in the community.
Now, when you lay the pipe, because it’s now a utility, meaning that it is NWC that is laying the pipe, like every other customer everywhere else in Jamaica, you go and you apply for a meter and the residents have to do that. When we turn on the pipes, as Minister Samuda explained, it would be very intrusive for us to go into somebody’s house and have a ceremony in their house to show that there is water in the community so what they do is they give a temporary connection to the main that is run to show that water is there.
Now, some smart person with devious intent to mislead puts out a video to say, ‘See, they’re taking back the pipes they laid. ’ Now, the mentality, the kind of people who do that are the same people who actually did that, that in the election for Shahine Robinson- God rest her soul, in 2001, I believe, I saw for myself that just before the election, they came and put down pipes and told people that yes, you’re going to get water in Lime Bottom in Ocho Rios, and before the election could be finished, the night of the election, they came and took up back the pipes.
Now, that’s the mentality. Why would you do that? There are people who would believe that because there’s always a thing called confirmation bias. If you see something that you already agree with or that’s your position, you’re going to believe it, so there are people who won’t check, who won’t research, who won’t go and ask questions. They’ll just accept it because it confirms their bias. And there are others who are totally innocent that they really don’t know, and they accept what is presented to them at face value.
Now, you tell me which political organization is respectful of you. Is it the political organization that will create a false video to mislead you, to feed into your known biases? Or is it the political organization that will give you the facts? And that’s what each Jamaican has to consider with all the fake news that is being created and circulated to create a certain perspective, to ride and rile up discontent with false wood, to play on your emotion and to trick you, which political party then really respects you and cares about you, if that is what they’re doing?
And every voter needs to ask themselves this. When I saw the video, I could have ignored it, but I said, you know what, we have ignored the lies for far too long. And every lie that they tell will be exposed, and therefore, we have these events because for everyone who said they don’t have water, for everyone who says nobody’s doing anything, we will respond to show what we are doing because we have projects for days to show.
I could be doing a groundbreaking, a commissioning and opening for the next six months every week. I’m looking at the NWC staff, and I know they’re saying, please don’t do that, Mr Prime Minister. I know they’re saying that. We have over a hundred projects that I could go and break ground for every one because for every lie that they tell, yes, there are people without water; of course. It’s not just yesterday. It’s not just today. As I pointed out to you, the young lady was honest enough, reasonably enough, to say from her 35 years of existence, she never had water.
The people in Mason, that community is a community that emerged out of a plantation; never had piped water. So yes, there are communities still in Jamaica that don’t have water, but that is not the full picture. The full picture is that the government has accelerated the pace at which it is delivering water. And if someone were to come and tell you, vote for me on the snap of a finger, you’re going to get water, they don’t respect you because they think that your thinking is shallow and you can be told anything and you believe it.
I just had to use this opportunity to point that out to the thinking Jamaicans and to the unthinking Jamaicans as well, and we invite you to join the reasonable middle Jamaica, the reasonable thinking population to dismiss the flying horses.
Another groundbreaking initiative is the NWC’s Amnesty Programme. In November 2024, we extended a lifeline to those who had been disconnected from water service for more than six months. Through this program, pensioners, Path beneficiaries and persons living with disabilities received up to 100% reprieve on outstanding balances and other customers received up to 50%.
Let me pause here and take a sip of the NWC’s bottled tap water, meaning it comes from the pipe.
As of March 14th, over 33,000 customers are engaged with the amnesty. So, 33,000 persons made inquiry checks and called the NWC, trying to find out about whether or not they qualified and how to go about receiving the benefit. Six thousand eight hundred and seventy-six reconnections have been completed, and another eight thousand five hundred and thirty-five are in progress, meaning that they have passed the inquiry stage and they’re now in the process of being connected.
NWC has collected as a result of this amnesty $473 million to date and written off $1.18 billion in debt from households in need. This is not a promise, this is the reality. The government looks at its books, and it sees what it can do without impacting our fiscal responsibility, which would mean, if we did that, more tax on you. What it does now is that we are able to bring more people into the system who were locked off because they owed money, and this is a great thing to do. Six thousand eight hundred and seventy-six households now have water again, and another eight thousand five hundred and thirty-five is on their way, and you still have up to toward the end of May, so I encourage everyone to go and take advantage of this
We have some other big projects to come. I won’t go through all of them here, but one of the big projects, which I will be back in this area very soon, is the Western Water Resilience Project. Now, let me just quickly wrap that up. You would hear me talk about this word infrastructure. Infrastructure is an important thing, it’s big. You cannot develop a country without infrastructure, and there are some large infrastructures that we put in many years ago, like some of the big pipes that run from Martha Brae in Trelawny, runs right through St James and connect back in Hanover up to some parts of Negril.
That infrastructure is old and leaking breaks frequently. That is going to take about $28 billion to repair. Think of that $28 billion to repair. This government is going to do that, and we’re going to build the infrastructure better than was there before; bigger pipes with far more sophisticated systems to control it, far more sophisticated pumps and obviously, we have better technology to lay the pipe so that they will last longer and of course, better pipes that will last longer. I’m gonna be back here sometime in May, close to the end of May and at that time, I’ll say more about that.
So, for all the negative people who that’s what you thrive on, to believe that ‘nuttn nah gwaan’ and ‘nuttn nah happen’, and you consume all the nonsense that is being said, give yourself a chance to feed yourself with the truth. Explore the other perspective. Don’t only consume the lies that are being fed to you. Consume things that you can verify, that you can check, that you can see happening in front of you, and there is always a perspective, even with facts. When I look at this bottle of water, for those people who are negative, they will look at the water and they will say that this bottle is half empty. Why? Because their eyes are always cast to the negative and there are others who will look at this and they will say, this bottle is half full. Why? Because their eyes are always cast up and positive. I encourage all Jamaicans to be positive about yourselves and your country. Choose Jamaica, and God bless you.