Portmore to turn into a parish by subsequent native gov’t elections, says Jamaican MP

One Jamaican Member of Parliament believes that the city of Portmore will turn into its personal parish inside the subsequent few months.

Andrew Wheatley, the MP for South Central St. Catherine, mentioned it’s probably that Portmore will turn into Jamaica’s fifteenth parish by the following native authorities elections, that are due February 2024.

“That may be a dedication that we made and a dedication that we’re going to see. When the following authorities elections is known as, Portmore might be a parish,” mentioned Wheatley whereas talking at a constituency convention in East Central St. Catherine.

This is able to be the primary time since 1867 {that a} new parish is being created.

Wheatley chaired the Joint Choose Committee (JSC) of the Parliament that was appointed to contemplate and report on the movement.

Final yr, the Home of Representatives authorized the movement of Portmore to turn into a parish. The Home vote adopted two weeks of debate on a report from the (JSC) of the Parliament that thought-about parish standing for Portmore.

Wheatley mentioned the advice is that it’s named Portmore, much like the mannequin for Kingston the place the capital is Kingston.

A Invoice was later drafted to be tabled in Parliament. The Invoice has implications for the boundaries of the municipality in addition to the flexibility of residents to immediately elect their mayor.

It wants a majority vote in each homes of the Parliament for the transfer to be authorized. Nonetheless, the Folks’s Nationwide Occasion is in opposition to the transfer, saying that Portmore lacks the important infrastructure wanted for parish standing presently.

Why does the federal government need Portmore to turn into a parish?

The transfer is maintaining good on an election promise made by the Jamaica Labour Occasion (JLP) years in the past. Senator Kamina Johnson-Smith had said that the imaginative and prescient for the parish was shared by former Prime Minister Bruce Golding and it had not come to fruition.

“We’re renewing that imaginative and prescient to make sure that Portmore, with its younger vibrant inhabitants, can have the chance to have its personal municipal company in order that it could possibly gather its personal property taxes and decide its personal growth plan to make sure that it may be all that the residents of Portmore need it to be,” mentioned Johnson Smith beforehand.

Town already has its personal municipal council, a function of native authorities which had all the time been instituted parish-by-parish. It’s the solely metropolis on the island that operates individually from the parish it resides in because it pertains to native authority.

Moreover, the JLP had said that “Portmore will be capable of have its personal shares of the parochial income fund, and make plans that it could possibly finance. This may also imply the event of its personal market, hospital, upgraded faculties, water provide and roads.”

Learn: Jamaican Authorities Planning to Make Portmore the Island’s fifteenth Parish