Letter of the Day | Get Portmore’s infrastructure ready before parish status

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Travelling from Portmore, St Catherine, to downtown Kingston in the mornings and evenings (during peak hours) takes way too long because of the volume of vehicles on the main roads. This is a major concern for many citizens who live in the future parish of Portmore.

According to OPM Communications (December 10, 2024) on the new SPARK Road Project – the road rehabilitation project is a major focus. How is it that we are focusing on making Portmore a parish when we cannot even get people to work on time and without an accident. City planning and management is very poor in Jamaica and this needs to improve. Before we form a new parish, why don’t we get our infrastructure ready?

I sincerely hope that the team that is planning to turn Portmore into a parish has considered all the possible scenarios like: increased traffic, increased water supply, energy requirements, public transportation issues, healthcare options for local residents, emergency services like fire and police, zoning requirements, environmental impact assessments, geological surveys, housing solutions and allotted commercial spaces for the proposed Silicon valley. Further to this, if we are going to transform Portmore into a Caribbean Silicon valley, we need to think about the increased pollution to the Kingston Harbour and how to handle that.

The concept of a Silicon Valley is a culture shift for Jamaica and to get an entire city to agree with this means that you need to involve the major universities and HEART Trust/NSTA in this project to get everyone on board. We also will need four-lane roadways leading into and out of Portmore both on the Mandela side and the Marcus Garvey side of Kingston and St Andrew.

A. LAWE

Kingston 10