Soldiers to get marching orders

PLANS to move the country's army headquarters from Up Park Camp in Kingston to Caymanas, St Catherine, are advanced, with Prime Minister Bruce Golding, who holds the development portfolio, due to look more closely at the issue during a meeting with the Urban Development Corporation later this week.

Golding told the House of Representatives yesterday that the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) has already been given the lands for the construction of its new headquarters. He also said preliminary work on the design for the future use of land at Up Park Camp has already been done.

"We have already transferred to the JDF over 4,000 acres of land in Caymanas. That will become a new headquarters. They will have a new training facility there and a major operational base. It is something that will be done over time," Golding said yesterday.

He was contributing to the debate on the amendment to the Urban Development Act, which is intended to give incentives to investors to pump resources into downtown Kingston.

Golding said the move to relocate the JDF would "free up 270 acres of land sitting in the middle of the city that, in my view, is going to provide an opportunity for us to retrofit the city of Kingston".

He said moving the JDF would "provide it (the Corporate Area) with the lungs that it does not now have and create the kind of facilities that would completely rejuvenate the city of Kingston".

But Portia Simpson Miller, the leader of the opposition, expressed reservations about the impending relocation.

"I am not saying we are opposing yet. I am saying we would love to have the discussions on that. There are security concerns that just jump out at me immediately, and other concerns in terms of our history and the preservation of our heritage sites."

Meanwhile, Golding said the new Up Park Camp is going to be "something that engages the entire community of the Corporate Area". He said the design of the area would be carefully managed, and even disclosed that constructions would be carefully zoned.

Golding said the area beside the Bustamante Hospital for Children would become a medical complex "where every possible medical procedure that you want could be had there".