Kgn municipality considers going after new lottery licence
Published:Friday | March 20, 2020 | 12:24 AM
The Kingston & St Andrew Municipal Corporation, KSAMC, will be renewing its application for a licence to operate a city lottery to finance the capital city’s infrastructure, without having to rely on central government.
Mayor of Kingston Delroy Williams said a city lottery would go a far way in rebranding, reimaging and redeveloping the city’s infrastructure, including roads, gullies, drains – in some cases, theconstruction of new drains.
The first application for a licence was in 2008 while Desmond McKenzie was mayor of Kingston and was spearheaded primarily by then Deputy Mayor Lee Clarke, Williams recalled.
Following amendments to legislation in February 2016, the parish councils were renamed municipal corporations, while own clerks and secretary managers were designated chief executive officers.
Williams said the local authority, then called the KSAC, intended to use revenue from the operation of a lottery to undertake road repairs, major infrastructural renovation, redevelopment, or putting in place new infrastructure across the municipality.
“Even though we talk about the City of Kingston, the municipality has a lot of rural areas. So when people think of Kingston and St Andrew, they primarily think about from downtown to Stony Hill; but if you travel the municipality, you’ll realise that a significant portion is still what people would consider rural. A lot of roads in those rural areas require repairs and they are expensive to repair,” said Williams, who became mayor in December 2016.
“When I took office, I had asked that we re-engage on the matter and I know, over time, we have been doing some work in terms of the submission of a new application,” he said. However, “we haven’t reached the stage to resubmit it, but I know it’s something we are looking at.”
In a letter to The Gleaner published on March 6 this year Councillor Clarke, himself a former mayor of Kingston, continued to question why the corporation was refused a licence. He wants Greg Christie, in his new role as executive director of the Integrity Commission, with effect from May 18, to investigate the matter as one of his first tasks.
The city’s lotto would have been used to fix at least 60 per cent of parish council roads within five years, providing jobs for 2,500 people directly, and 5,000 labourers on road projects. It was also intended that revenue from the lotto would build a factory to make gabion baskets for sale across the Caribbean, a project which would have employed another 100 people.
The local authority first made an application for the lottery licence in November 2008. The lottery, which would be a joint public-private venture, was projected to raise between $80 million and $100 million monthly. However, in 2010, acting on the advice of the attorney general, the Betting Gaming and Lotteries Commission refused the application on the basis that the parish council did not have the right to operate such a system.