Morant Bay Urban Centre Stakeholders Engagement
Keynote Address
By
Dr. The Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
At the
Morant Bay Urban Centre Stakeholders Engagement
On
November 13, 2024
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Thank you very much, Madam Director of Protocol and Master of the Ceremonies.
First of all, let me thank all of you for coming out. The weather threatened to derail this event, but God has other plans and he understands the objective of what we are trying to achieve.
Let me thank the Minister’s fraternal who prayed for us an earnest prayer for our safety, but also for our welfare and well-being. These are not ordinary times. We are living in a time of great change. Globally, you see wars and rumours of wars. You see great human suffering all over but it is also a time of great opportunities; the rapid change in technology, the growth of nations and economies but we also see the changing climate.
We are having hurricanes and tropical storms when in our lifetimes, we never experienced them with so much intensity and frequency and so for little Jamaica, we can’t just say that things will happen to us and we can’t do anything about it. Little Jamaica has to be instrumental, meaning we have to take our faith in our own hands. We have to make our destiny. We can’t make the future just happen, we have to create the future we want. For too long as a people, we have sat by and allowed the world to happen to us and that has essentially been the history of St Thomas. No one has taken a grand plan for St Thomas. It has just been left as a parish. For some, it is the continued punishment for the rebellion and for others, it is just to abandon this place, nothing good can come but I don’t hold that view.
As a post-independence Jamaican, I have never believed that my progress, my prosperity, and my development rests on anyone else. I don’t look to anyone else for my development, and I don’t do it for Jamaica. I believe that I can develop Jamaica, that I can build Jamaica. You must build your own country, build your own household; us together must build the future we want. For too often there has been a kind of thinking that we must wait on foreigners, we must borrow debt or get grants to do the things we want. I do not believe in that. I believe we are an independent people but for some, independence stops at their political independence but political independence is not enough and indeed, it will be short-lived if you are not economically independent. If you can’t, as we say in Jamaica, push your own key, somebody else will be your master.
The St Thomas Project is about us showing the rest of Jamaica, and indeed the rest of the world, that through our own resources, through our own initiative, through our own agency, we can build our parish and we can build our country. I wanted to set the grand context, it’s about showing that we can be an economically independent people. But from that high-level idea to where the people in the audience are distressed and by their road conditions, distressed by the lack of water in their pipes to their homes, distressed by many other challenges that we face in the society, that grand vision may very well pale to the challenges that you face on a day-to-day basis, but that is the greatest mistake that you could make.
Very often, we dismiss the grand vision and say that is not going to help, I want you to deal with this problem that I face now. And what you have gotten over the years are short-term measures to a problem that continues to recur because it is not today that the roads have been bad, and you have been complaining. It is not today that you don’t have water in your pipes and you have been complaining. It is not today that your road needs bushing and it isn’t done and you have been complaining. It is not today that they chase you off the shop plaza with your little basket of goods and you complain about it. It’s not today. It has been happening over and over again.
So you, the residents of St Thomas, are a part of this grand vision. You need to understand the vision, that it is the pursuit of our economic independence that is going to change these pain points that affect you every day. Because without the economy, no road can be fixed, no water can be provided, and what you will get from politicians who can’t deal with the economy are beautiful-sounding promises and many of you suck it up and bite and believe in it and then are disappointed and then you turn around and say I don’t care for politics anymore.
I have come to change the way in which we do things in Jamaica and we have been changing the way in which we do things in Jamaica. I can stand here today as a symbol of that change. What you are seeing around you is a visual demonstration of the change. Some people are only going to believe it when they see it. Others will believe the concept, but most will only believe it when they can see and touch it. Well, today is a day when we hope that the residents can come and see and touch the change that is coming in your parish.
When I speak on the economy, many people say, don’t talk about the economy because nobody understands the economy. And you know what I reflect on? Why is it that we believe our people are ignorant? Why is it that we believe that our people don’t have sense? Yes, there are those who don’t understand and who would seek to diminish the value of the economy, but why should we yield to those people? Why don’t we speak of what we really want to see which is a prosperous economy that can deliver good pensions to our pensioners? For those who aren’t working and are in need of support, there is a proper social safety net that you can get your proper PATH benefits that come through the economy. Why not speak of a good economy that can fix the roads in your communities? Speak of that because my friends, the route to a good economy starts with developments like these.
We invited all of the stakeholders here today to see what the new economy of St Thomas will look like and we’re not trying to create a secluded zone where the people of St Thomas are excluded from it. We are not trying to create a business colony, that’s not what this is about. This is about creating an atmosphere where every Jamaican and everybody from St Thomas can come and do business, can live and raise their families, can earn an income; that is what we are building here without having to contend with overcrowded streets, congestion, a little rain falls and you get splashed and you can’t do business as how it is inconvenient in the town as it is right now.
Our young people, they watch CNN, they are always on Twitter, TikTok and Facebook and wherever, and they see how other countries look with better buildings and better roads and better facilities, and they wonder why we can’t have it here. It stuck with me that when I came to St Thomas to have a meeting in 2015 about the development of the parish, and I’ll never forget it, a young lady said, “We want development. We want a Kentucky. We want a stoplight”. For her, that was the meaning of what development is. Yes, we have Kentucky and we have a stoplight, but it’s more than that.
Here, we are hoping to carry industries that will employ people from your communities, that will give you income in your pocket, that will make your household better. What you are seeing here is just the start. We are going to be building houses in these areas because Kingston and Portmore can’t carry all the housing. In less than an hour, you can reach Kingston from here.
In the new development, there are 150,000 housing solutions needed to fill the housing demand in Jamaica and all of that can’t be built in Kingston. Some of it have to be built right here so we are going to push housing development into St Thomas, but for people to choose to come and live in St Thomas, they want to know that they have good facilities here. And the people who live here want better housing, too. So you’re going to see the parish grow and I want you to be a part of that growth, to be involved in it. Your children will be employed here. Some of you will be employed here. You will be selling things to the businesses that operate here. And the businesses that operate here, they will be selling things to those who remain in the town but we also have a plan for the charming town of Morant Bay.
Notice the words I use because Morant Bay has a great deal of history that we have not tapped. We haven’t really tapped into it so the next industry that is going to come into this area is tourism but we are not trying to create all-inclusives. I am certain that with the lovely beaches along the coastline of this parish, you’re going to see some resorts come but what we want for St Thomas, for this side of the island going all the way back to Port Antonio, is more community-based tourism where people come, they rent a room from you, and they go on the beach, they can enjoy a cafe in the town, they can go tour the museum; that is what we want to do in this parish. And this parish is well-placed to do it, with low crime, low violence, lands available and we have such pleasant people and hospitable people.
So, as the good book says, there is a plan for you, my friends. A plan to prosper you and not to harm you, that’s the plan. So, as you come to tour with us to see what we are doing, take it in and take it back to your community. Start to make your plans as to how you’re going to be integrated in this and how you are going to be part of the new St Thomas economy. We are going to build St Thomas and fulfil the dreams that our national hero Paul Bogle had when he revolted against an oppressive system. Let us start the building of the dream today.
God bless you and thank you.