The Boundbrook Urban Centre Groundbreaking Ceremony
Keynote Address
By
The Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
At
The Boundbrook Urban Centre Groundbreaking Ceremony
On
August 14, 2024
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First, let me commend the performances. I’ve been to many events as you can imagine, and I’ve seen many school performances and oftentimes, quietly, I reserve my disappointment because the performances don’t live up to what I expected. It’s not the student’s fault, it’s the cultural direction. It is the interpretation and the translation of our culture into action and sometimes it is without depth. Sometimes it is performed without any talented consideration, without passion, it’s not uplifting but every performance that has graced this stage here today is a gold medal-winning performance; a true representation of our culture. And I am impressed and so I give my commendations to the performers but I also give commendations to the teachers and the cultural directors. It is a reflection of Portland’s continued preservation of what is good about Jamaica.
There is something special about Portland and it is not just the rarefied air, the proximity of your townships and residents to the sea, the beautiful, lush and verdant landscapes and hillsides; it is the people, something special about the people. And as I drove through St Thomas coming in, a member of my security detail who is from the parish, he said to me, “Prime Minister, as these roads are being developed, I don’t want them to change the character of Portland.” A very profound statement because roads and infrastructure mean access. And access means different perspectives, different people, different behaviours, different norms can come into the space and change the nature of the area.
So, I know that there are many Portlanders who welcome the development but are concerned that the development, the infrastructure could change the nature of the place. This administration understands the nexus between infrastructure and culture. We understand the nexus between infrastructure and the economy. We understand the nexus between infrastructure and the security and therefore, whatever we do, we have these considerations in the forefront of our minds when we develop policy. There is one other critical element that we must consider, the nexus between infrastructure and climate.
So, I want all Portlanders to understand that you have a thoughtful government that is not just eager to lay asphalt and widen roads and have people come into the space and utilize the space. We are very cognizant and understand that infrastructure must improve the quality of life. So, as I entered the town of Port Antonio, I would have been corrected if Michael Lee Chin were here, he would say city. We’re not quite there yet but as I entered the town of Port Antonio, and I saw that traffic in the town, and the people moving about, bustling about, and I’m looking on their faces, everybody trying to get to their destination, make ends meet, the inconvenience of having to step off the sidewalk to walk in the middle of the road, to hop and skip garbage that may be in the road, a pothole, avoid a car, and I see the misery and inconvenience and frustration on the faces of the citizens.
I see it as well when I stand in the motorcade in the roof of my vehicle, waving to people as I go by campaigning, and I see the eye contact, the hesitation. “I’d like to see a Prime Minister about the condition.” The condition and the experience of that condition, regardless of how I may feel that I’m achieving something, I’m doing a road here, a road there, a park here, new buildings, but my condition has not changed. And I am frustrated because I’ve heard promises before. I have heard sweet-talking politicians many times over but my condition has not changed. And when I stop and I shake hands and I am embraced and they said, “We love you, Prime Minister. We love you. God bless you, but the condition hasn’t changed.”
It has been 40 years that the condition has been the way it has been. Portland is, as a parish, 300 years old. Port Antonio was about 1793 thereabout, don’t quote me on it, but in the 1700s the town of Port Antonio was established. And you know what was the basis of the town, why it developed? It developed as a port town because of the banana trade. Sugar to a lesser extent, but mostly the export of bananas and other fruits. And then it got further impetus as basically the first town of tourism in this region, in the Caribbean really and we have some historical tourism gems in this region. My understanding, of course, that this is the birthplace of the famous British secret agent. I’m not talking about Bobby Montague 007. I’m talking about James Bond with Errol Flynn who developed this fictional character.
Portland has great roots and has contributed significantly to national development and indeed, internationally as well so it is time for the administration to pay attention to Port Antonio, to Portland, and to this entire eastern end of the island: St Thomas, Portland, and St Mary. Now, how do we do this? The first thing that we needed to do as an administration is to ensure that we have the resources to respond and that meant that we had to settle the fiscal issues, and I use this big word, fiscal. In simple terms, we needed to have settled the flow of public revenue to sustain a long-term investment profile.
The challenge with Jamaica is that we did not for the last 50 years settle the flow of public revenues sufficient to sustain long-term investments in infrastructure. That was really our issue so we couldn’t take on projects that had a long horizon for return and I give you a perfect example. We built a Marina here, I believe that was in 2003. What was the intention of the Marina? It was to spark tourism and get some investments into the area but that by itself wasn’t enough. The government needed to have had the financial wherewithal to sit down and plan a full infrastructure rollout for the infrastructure investment to be meaningful in transforming the lives of people so that people can say, yes, this infrastructure is going to make the quality of my life better. So one isolated investment by itself is not going to do it which is why people still look at these investments and say, will it really make my life better because of the experiences that they have had.
What is different now? What is different now is that the government has made a massive investment to improve 147 kilometres of road linking Port Antonio directly to Kingston. So, from Harbour View, come all the way around, you’re going to have the best quality road, and it is not merely asphalt. This is what we call a utility corridor. Underneath that road are massive pipelines to carry water, fibre optic cables to carry internet, and we have realigned and upgraded the electricity utility service along the area in addition to massive civil works investments in retaining walls, drainage, and other such works to protect the road. It’s a massive undertaking. It is the largest road infrastructure development that we have undertaken in Jamaica.
Stop for a moment and think that this is not a Greenfield project. We could have decided to just find a new corridor for the road. We could have decided to do that, run the road in the hill but what would have happened if we did that? It would have killed off all the towns and residences on the old road. And then what would have happened? It would be hard to justify having built a new road, and spending money to improve the old one. We decided as a government that the intention of the investment is to improve the economic and social circumstances of the people where they exist. So we have made the investment keeping the old alignment as much as possible running through towns.
Now, that comes with its own challenges because it’s not easy to build a road that people live on, the inconveniences, the problems, all of the issues that come with it but strategically it is important to keep the economy of the parishes going. But, as I said earlier, we also have to consider the nexus between infrastructure and economy but we also now have to consider the nexus between infrastructure and climate change. The historical development of our infrastructure, particularly our roads, is that they are developed to connect ports so they run along the seashore, the coastline and so they are always susceptible to environmental challenges. So what have we decided to do? Two things.
First, those roads that have been in existence since 1793 or whenever Port Antonio was established, they have developed economic value, but they have also developed significant touristic value; beautiful scenery and access to the beach. So, we develop those for the long-term benefit of tourism but we are also developing, as I speak, a bypass for Port Antonio that will be in the hills, which will run behind here, go through the hills for 75 million US dollars. It is almost now going to public investment approval. Well, I believe it is at public investment approval now. And that road will take off much of the traffic that is not here for sightseeing, is not here to go into the town, they want to get about their business so those can take the bypass road. But that bypass road is built for resilience because we have moved it off the shore and therefore, we are giving the town of Port Antonio the opportunity to breathe so you won’t be taking traffic that is passing through or don’t have business here.
That bypass road will ultimately continue through the hills and connect to the 14 kilometres of road between Yallahs and Harbor View so you’re going to have essentially two roads. One, the main road that will carry heavy traffic, heavy volume, get you to where you’re going quickly and one, the more scenic route that is for the tourism economy, which we intend to develop coming all the way from St Thomas coming all the way around into Port Antonio. That’s the vision, that’s the long-term strategy, and every year we are building towards it but we need to do one other thing.
Having built the road, we now need to build buildings that are suitable for public use, built for purpose and that is what we’re doing, not just here in Port Antonio, but we have done it in Portmore where we are building out the Bernard Lodge project, a massive project of over 10,000 housing solutions and an urban centre and that is underway. You can go there and see what is being done. We have done it, not talking about it. We have done it in Morant Bay. I passed it today, I couldn’t stop. I looked over there and I can tell you, it is coming along nicely. An entire new township, the first that we have built a township in maybe a hundred years or more, The Morant Bay Urban Center.
And now we are doing this small urban centre, 6.68 acres of land. It will have the municipal building. It will have other government entities plus private facilities. It will be linked with the courthouse and I believe with the examination depot. I believe you have some more lands that you’re looking to develop but there is, my friends, a master plan so this chaka chaka development. And I can tell you that because we were trying to avoid chaka chakaness, it took longer than we wanted because as we had already completed the plans for this, I announced some other plans for Port Antonio as a whole and I brought in a world-famous architect and urban developer. His name is Gordon Gill, a Jamaican. This is a man who has done designs for new cities in China and Saudi Arabia, Toronto, and Dubai and he’s saying, I want my country to look like these places. And we brought him in and they have done a massive development plan for the entire waterfront of Port Antonio specifically looking at the lands owned by the Port Authority, the UDC and other government entities.
Portland is set for massive developments, but they’re not going to be high-intensity, high-density developments. No, we specifically want to avoid that. We are going for high-value, low-density development including the development of the East Harbour into a cruise shipping port and all of that is being planned. So we are not just doing one little development and expect that one little development to spark and be the catalyst for new development. No, we have a well-thought-out coordinated plan backed by the resources to sustain long-term infrastructure investment without interruption. That is what is different.
So, to my friends who expect that in one election cycle, what took 10 election cycles to create which is the disinvestment in your infrastructure, meaning that from the building was built or the road was laid, nothing else was done. So the infrastructure is there, what do you think happened? No matter how pretty you build the house, after the first five years it starts to depreciate and if you don’t invest in it, it will eventually fall down. And that is why Jamaica’s infrastructure looks the way it looks.
Jamaica, more than other Caribbean countries, had an earlier start in the development of our infrastructure. We had a new Kingston long before Trinidad had Trincity. We had high-quality roads long before many of the other Caribbean countries but if you were to shoot a music video, and you are looking for high-quality backdrop infrastructure, you’re going to have to search hard to find it in Jamaica because the infrastructure has run down over the last 50 years because we didn’t have the fiscal wherewithal to sustain a long-term program of infrastructure investment.
That is what is different with this government but it is hard to communicate that to someone who for 50 years has experienced deterioration in their infrastructure. My challenge is to convince people that the government is doing the correct thing in making the infrastructure development and the only time that they’re going to be convinced is when they see it happen. So you wonder why it is that we spend so much time on a ceremony like this, it’s very important because if there is ever a disruption in the plans that have been laid to give Jamaica that uninterrupted long-term runway of projects, we will go back to the period when the fiscal arrangements are blown, when people who don’t have an understanding of infrastructure and development take policy and lead us back down the road of destruction.
So, it’s very important ]that I communicate to the people what it is that we’re doing. And these are not just words, go and tour the road from Harbour View come all the way around to here and see the transformation. Go and look on the Montego Bay Bypass and see the transformation. Travel on the East West Highway from May Pen straight into Mandeville and see the transformation. Go to Bernard Lodge and see the transformation. Come to the Morant Bay Urban Centre and see the transformation. Go to Portmore and see the transformation in the Resilience Park. Go to St James and see the transformation that has happened with Harmony Park. And this is all happening all at once. When has that happened in Jamaica? I challenge the critics. I challenge the naysayers. I challenge the purveyors of negativity. When? If there is any criticism, it’s that we are doing too much.
It is an obtuse and perverse logic that a government that is doing what it’s supposed to be doing is being criticized. And I know when I speak this way, there are a lot of people who are squirming in their seats. They can’t take it because they can’t take the truth when the truth is told but a lot of people feel it’s politics time, I am not ready for politics time yet. We will campaign on our record of performance and what I am busy doing is building, building, building. Whether it is a social house where a family has been improved, a housing scheme house where someone who is earning minimum wage or a little above that can purchase or we are building new roads, bringing in new buses, bringing in new garbage trucks, building new ports; we are the government that is building Jamaica. We understand infrastructure and this project will not be the last one.
I see members of the private sector are here. We incorporate the private sector in these plans because we believe in the democratization of wealth. Meaning that the government must not own up everything. We brought in the private sector and we said to the private sector, sell shares to the market. Let the average man can say he owns a piece of it. So we have a few more of these to go. We have 50 acres of land in Falmouth. Falmouth is a town that is exploding under the same pressure, and we are going to do another urban centre planning an entire new town in Falmouth. We have another 40 acres of land in Negril, we’re going to do the same thing. We have lands in Old Harbour, we’re going to do the same thing. We have Hopewell in Hanover, which is a bottleneck. We have put that as a priority where we’re going to build an entirely new township of Hopewell.
So, this government is serious about infrastructure development. We understand that infrastructure is going to change your life, and improve the quality of your life so for my brothers and sisters who have been frustrated for decades, who have not seen anything new happen in their built environment, who have to struggle through traffic, congested roads, dirty streets, and buildings that are inconvenient, I say to you, keep patience with the government. The plans are in place, the finances are in place, the technical skills are being put in place, and the programs are underway. We will fulfil the dream of Jamaica as the paradise, the developed country, the place of choice to live, work, raise your family, do business, have fun and retire in paradise.
God bless you. I love you.