Address
By
Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
At the
Commissioning of Mason Hall Water Supply Project
On
March 28, 2025
______________________________________________________________
Allow me to do the formalities and recognize the hardest-working Minister of Water, the Honourable Matthew Samuda, Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation
Allow me as well to recognize your Member of Parliament Robert “Bobby” Montague
Allow me to recognize all the other councillors who may be here from the St Mary Parish Council, and I see as well from the St Ann Parish Council who have joined us in celebration,
Mr Omar Sweeney, Board Chairman of the Rural Water Supply Limited. Good to see you, Mr Chairman.
I was particularly impressed with the performance of the students from the Mason Hall Primary and Infant School, particularly the little ones who did the rendition of ‘carry mi ackee go a Linstead market.’
And, of course, you, the wonderful people of Mason Hall and let me thank you for the very enthusiastic and robust welcome and greeting. I know that you were so happy to see me, but you are very happy to have the commissioning of water in this community.
It is with a profound sense of purpose and pride that I join you for the commissioning of the Mason Hall Water Supply Project, a flagship initiative under the Government of Jamaica, Caribbean Development Bank, Rural Water Supply Improvement Project Phase 1.
This not only represents a milestone for the people of Mason Hall, but it is also a symbol of the kind of development we believe in. We believe that development must be inclusive. Everyone must be involved, whether you are living in urban areas or in rural communities. It must be equitable. Meaning it must be fair, not because you live in a rural community, meaning that you get rural quality water supply. No, everybody must get good supply of water, and it must be transformational.
When we make our investments, it must have a distinct and appreciable difference in the lives of the people who will benefit. I know that all the households in Mason Hall will see a transformation in their household and in their daily lives. Those who would’ve had to carry water on their heads will no longer need to do so. Those who would have to buy water from the water truck, you would no longer have to do so. You can now have water in your kitchen and water in your shower.
Today, we are celebrating the fulfillment of a commitment that no community in Jamaica will be left behind, that basic services like potable water should be accessible to every citizen regardless of their geographic location. For us, it is a matter of dignity that every Jamaican should have access to potable water.
It is not only a matter of pride and dignity, but it is an economic necessity. Providing you with water in an efficient and reliable way improves your productivity. Consider the time that you waste carrying water to your house. Consider the income that you waste having to purchase water. Consider not having the inconvenience of not having water and how that will improve the quality of your life.
But having water is also a matter of your health. How much more healthy you would be if you didn’t have this stress worrying about water and carrying water and toiling to bring water to your home, but to do simple chores so for us, water is a matter of dignity. It’s a sense of giving you access to basic services, but especially for our young people, they see it as a sign of modernity. Modern living means having water in your house, and we can’t say we are in 2025 and so many of our households don’t have water in their shower. The people of Mason Hall are rightfully proud and happy to finally have access to clean, reliable water. It has been a dream deferred for many years. Now, we can celebrate it as reality achieved, so I want to speak to the scale of what we are doing here.
With this project, we are expanding water access to an additional 900 new customers. So, 900 households in this region that didn’t have water before, immediately, with the commissioning of this service, will now have water, and this is on top of the existing 4,273 residents already connected through the broader interventions by the Rural Water Limited and the National Water Commission. This includes 3,173 residents who are receiving significantly improved service and 1,100 new customers brought on through earlier processes. So effectively, this commissioning must be seen in the context of work that has already been done that would’ve previously brought on 4,273 new persons onto the National Grid, and now with this, we are putting on another 900.
It is important for me to place these facts on the table because in a democracy, it is the right of every citizen to express their opinion and indeed, to express their frustration. And it is ultimately the right of every citizen to express their opinion, their frustration or their elation in the ultimate expression of their freedom, which is their ballot. However, it is also the duty, as it is the right of every citizen, to express their opinions, their frustrations, or their happiness based upon facts, based upon context, and based upon reason rather than on emotion. And as a politician now 27 years elected and having to deal with constituents and voters, you get to understand the incredible level of frustration that exists in the Jamaican electorate, and that frustration is so widespread that it has led to a belief that government can’t really change anything.
There are still expectations. The electorate still makes demands, but privately, the electorate still believes that ‘cho, dem just talk, cho, dem just promise, cho, dem just a trick we, cho, dem incompetent, cho, they will never get it done. And what that has led to is not just a healthy skepticism of government- which for democracies to work, the electorate must have this healthy skepticism- but it has turned out to be more than just skepticism. It is almost a disdain and a disbelief, a lack of trust that government can deliver.
Mason Hall is a community that is over 200 years old. Mason Hall came out of a plantation. The core of the lands of this community were a plantation, and from that history, it was never meant to be a developed area. The plantation was a zone of exploitation so it was never intended that Mason Hall would develop as a community. The idea behind Mason Hall was that it should be a sugar plantation with small plots and allotments for the enslaved to live and proper facilities for the plantation owner who was by and large an absentee. But with the end of the system of slavery and the newly freed taking ownership for their community, Mason Hall started to emerge as a little district.
You mentioned, Madam MC, that your grandmother is 94 years old so even at her birth, Mason Hall would have been maybe 150 years old at that time, a well-established community. I go back to that history to make the point that from then till now, Mason Hall did not have a utility supply of water. Mason Hall did not have piped water to its homes.
As one person said in the audience, all they had was a little pan, and they had to carry water. Why am I making these two points? The first point is that people don’t believe that the government can actually change things even though they have the expectation that governments should change things. And the second point is that the things that give you the greatest discomfort, the greatest pain points that you have, for example, no water, this has not been a recent occurrence. This has been going on for a long time, and because it has been going on for such a long time, communities are rightly in disbelief that it will ever change.
How do we therefore really make a change in this? A change in how our people see our democracy and how we deliver the goods of the democracy, because that is what democracy must do. It must deliver prosperity. Water in your home is prosperity because you make that connection. You vote for water in your home. What it has turned out to be, this use of your vote for prosperity, is that sometimes you use the vote in a way that is not quite rational because as I have interacted with many voters, as I’ve said, I will oftentimes hear well, if me no get the water… That in itself is irrational, that if you don’t get the water, you’re not voting. In other words, the very power that you have to get the water, you decide that you’re not going to use it, but then there is the other side of the irrationality. If we don’t get the water, we’re not voting for you.
Now, that may be on the surface, a rational exercise for the citizen in terms of trying to hold the government to account for the water, but I’m here to tell you that that is very limited in terms of what it can actually deliver for you. And I will tell you why: because I’m certain in this audience, there are many persons who have withheld their votes because they got a promise and the water wasn’t delivered. And there are many persons who changed their votes because they got a promise that water would be delivered, and up until last year, when we broke ground, having either not voted or changed your vote for a promise, you still had no water. So how should the citizen of Mason Hall or any other district facing this challenge of I want the goods of democracy, how should we use our vote to secure our prosperity through the democratic process?
The first thing that the enlightened voter should look for in a government is not the promise of the goodies: the water, we’re going to deliver road, any politician worth his salt can stand up on a stage and speak eloquently and promise you anything. They can promise you anything, and many of you have fallen for it either by saying, ‘him so good, I’m going to change my vote, him promise me this or he said he’s going to do that; and you change your vote. And then when it doesn’t happen, you hiss your teeth and say politics can’t do nothing, but you have to now as electors, looking back at this history and recognising that you have to use your vote, your authority over the politicians in a different way. You must vote for the politicians because you can’t do without the politicians. There’s no way countries run without them, but you must use your vote to support the politicians that demonstrate the wherewithal to deliver. Some politicians come with wishes, and some politicians come with wherewithal. You ever heard that word before? Wherewithal: the ability, the capacity to turn promises and commitments into reality.
They may not be the most eloquent politicians because they take their limited time to develop their skill in administration and management, in understanding problems in managing systems and bureaucracy to actually get the results for you. I stand here as a politician not giving your wishes and dreams. I see myself as a leader of this country whose mission it is to deliver the benefits for the people of this country to create the wherewithal, the ability, the engine, to transport the Jamaican people from poverty to prosperity, and the first part of my responsibility is to ensure that we give the Jamaican people a strong economy.
A big trick has been played on all of you, and that trick is that you were led to believe that the government can deliver water, roads, security, healthcare, housing, and education without a strong economy. They tell you this, they say to you in this way, ‘He’s telling you about economy but economy can’t nyam’ putting in your mind that somewhere there is some secret fund that the government has that they can just dip into and come and deliver. And indeed, the secret fund that the government has dipped into many times is other people’s money, otherwise called more taxes or more debt. And when you take more taxes, it’s out of your pocket, and when you take more debt, they’re going to take more taxes from you to pay it back, so you got tricked. And until we break this notion that somehow I can get all the roads fixed and all the water fixed and everything you want, and you can get it now without focusing on the economy.
Let me tell you something: the only reason why you’re going to have water in your house tonight, in your shower, is because we have the economy that produces the resources to be able to do this. So, not only can the economy nyam, the economy can drink, and if we don’t have a good economy, you can’t nyam and you can’t drink.
What has this government done? We have spent the time to ensure that we have a strong economy, so I can stand here this Friday as I did the Friday before and the Friday before, and the Friday before, and the Friday before, and the Friday before, one after the other, turning on water, commissioning new water system, handing over houses, looking at roads under SPARK that is going to be repaired, breaking ground for a housing scheme. It’s the economy that has done that. It’s the good government that has done that.
I hear some people talking and again, democracy. You listen to everybody, but they still don’t understand that Jamaica has changed, the mentality has changed, but more importantly, the mentality of the leadership of Jamaica has changed. Budgets after budgets, after budgets have been read in parliament, and politicians have stood up and said, I will give a billion dollars as a grant to young people for their first deposit. Very laudable. Nobody can argue with that. They have said they would give meals every day on the PATH programme or school feeding programme, all kinds of promises. You don’t think I would want to do those things too?
But for the first time in the history of Jamaica, a sweet-mouthed politician would’ve stood up and made sweet promises but because this government has changed the culture of budgets, we took the time to cost it, to put a price on it to see whether or not, if these promises make sense because in the long run and what they are proposing in the short run is you going to pay for it because you may believe that the promises are free but if you don’t price it correctly, if you don’t put a cost to it, it is going to end up coming back to you.
My friends, the long-suffering people of Mason Hall, we have been able to bring water to your homes after 200 years of establishment as a district without asking you to pay one additional dollar more in taxes. There are many communities like Mason Hall waiting their turn, and I know some of them are frustrated. I recall going to a lovely community in South St James, and a young lady came to me and she said, Prime Minister, I work in a supermarket in Montego Bay, my pay isn’t much, and I have to pay something like $12,000 for a truck of water and that’s heavy for her. And I’m very sympathetic. I understand. And then a gentleman came up, a taxi driver, and he said to me, Prime Minister, if we don’t get the water, no vote.
And of course, all of these things, they stay with me. I go back when I have some quiet time and I reflect and say let me see how I can speed it up but it represents the underlying challenge of our electorate; the lack of trust, the high level of frustration but the kind of politics that has not yet caught up to truly hold politicians to account, the kind of agency that we need to exercise which means we own this country and each and every one of you has a duty to act responsibly in how we exercise that ownership, especially over our leadership. What we must hold the leadership to account for is the water, but that’s just the surface; that’s what you see in front of you. Behind that is the wherewithal, and you need to start as a people to hold your government to account for a good economy because it is not the good wishes of the politician that delivers the water. It is the wherewithal of the economy that delivers that water to you.
We’re going to be delivering under this same project here to the people in Agualta Vale/Jordan Run, that scheme in Southeastern St Mary, Albert Town/Ulster Spring in Southern Trelawny, Union/Balaclava Scheme in Northeastern St Elizabeth, Port Morant/Airy Castle Scheme in Eastern St Thomas, Green Park and Higgin Town, and that is the Bamboo scheme in Southeastern and Northwestern St Ann. These communities are going to benefit similarly to how the people in Mason Hall today feel very happy.
So, my friends, I just thought I would share these few thoughts with you, and I hope that as you enjoy the water as you cook running in your indoor kitchen, and as you turn on the shower in your bathroom and you say “shower”, you will remember that it is not the sweet promises of politicians which have been broken over and over again, because I’m sure your 94-year-old grandmother could probably recall several times that politicians have made promises. What matters is the economy, and you need to ensure that you cast your vote for the leaders who will keep the economy strong, who will grow the economy, and who will use the benefits of the economy for you. That is how you need to vote.
So I urge you, that as you consider your options and your choices, choose what is best for Jamaica. Choose Jamaica. God bless you and thank you.