PM touts Morant Bay Urban Centre as a game changer for St. Thomas

By Halshane Burke 

   

Prime Minister Andrew Holness is touting the Morant Bay Urban Centre as a game changer for the economic prospects of St. Thomas.

 

Addressing stakeholders during an engagement at the urban centre on Wednesday evening, the Prime Minister underscored the importance of the development of key infrastructure. 

 

"The St. Thomas project is about us showing the rest of Jamaica and indeed the rest of the world that through our own resources, through our own initiative, through our own agency, we can build our parish and we can build our country. So I wanted to set the brand context. It's about showing that we can be an economically independent people," he said. 

 

The Prime Minister said the urban centre is the catalyst for further development. 

 

"We are going to be building houses in these areas. Kingston and Portmore can't carry all the houses. In less than an hour you can reach Kingston from here. There are 150,000 housing solutions needed to fill the housing demand in Jamaica. So we are going to push housing development into St. Thomas. For people to choose to come and live in St. Thomas, they want to know that they have good facilities here. So you're going to see the parish grow," Mr. Holness asserted. 

 

He said there are other plans for Morant Bay, which he acknowledged "has a great deal of history that we have not tapped". The government, he said, will be focused on bringing community-based tourism to the parish.