One Jamaican Member of Parliament believes that the town of Portmore will become its own parish within the next few months.
Andrew Wheatley, the MP for South Central St. Catherine, said it is likely that Portmore will become Jamaica’s 15th parish by the next local government elections, which are due February 2024.
“That is a commitment that we made and a commitment that we are going to see. When the next government elections is called, Portmore will be a parish,” said Wheatley while speaking at a constituency conference in East Central St. Catherine.
This would be the first time since 1867 that a new parish is being created.
Wheatley chaired the Joint Select Committee (JSC) of the Parliament that was appointed to consider and report on the motion.
Last year, the House of Representatives approved the motion of Portmore to become a parish. The House vote followed two weeks of debate on a report from the (JSC) of the Parliament that considered parish status for Portmore.
Wheatley said the recommendation is that it be named Portmore, similar to the model for Kingston where the capital is Kingston.
A Bill was later drafted to be tabled in Parliament. The Bill has implications for the boundaries of the municipality as well as the ability of residents to directly elect their mayor.
It needs a majority vote in both houses of the Parliament for the move to be legal. However, the People’s National Party is against the move, saying that Portmore lacks the critical infrastructure needed for parish status at this time.
Why does the government want Portmore to become a parish?
The move is keeping good on an election promise made by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) years ago. Senator Kamina Johnson-Smith had stated that the vision for the parish was shared by former Prime Minister Bruce Golding and it had not come to fruition.
“We are renewing that vision to ensure that Portmore, with its young vibrant population, will have the opportunity to have its own municipal corporation so that it can collect its own property taxes and determine its own development plan to ensure that it can be all that the citizens of Portmore want it to be,” said Johnson Smith previously.
The city already has its own municipal council, a feature of local government which had always been instituted parish-by-parish. It is the only city on the island that operates separately from the parish it resides in as it relates to local authority.
Additionally, the JLP had stated that “Portmore will be able to have its own shares of the parochial revenue fund, and make plans that it can finance. This will also mean the development of its own market, hospital, upgraded schools, water supply and roads.”
Read: Jamaican Government Planning to Make Portmore the Island’s 15th Parish
