Pearly Beach permits suspended after gridlock

Following an emergency meeting between stakeholders at the St Ann Municipal Corporation on Sunday, a ban has been placed on permits for events at Pearly Beach, which has been cited as the main cause of Saturday’s gridlock in St Ann.

“Immediately, we’re suspending the permit for (events at) Pearly Beach for a little while,” Mayor Sydney Stewart told The Gleaner after the meeting.

“The police made that recommendation until we are able to examine again the Pearly Beach venue because the primary disturbances were really at Pearly Beach, according to the police,” Stewart said.

The meeting involved the municipal corporation, the police, the National Works Agency (NWA), and the St Ann Development Company (SADCo), a subsidiary of the Urban Development Corporation (UDC), which owns Pearly Beach.

SADCo has been mandated to rethink the process of venue rental and to provide new, tougher conditions for the hosting of events there.

The mayor said another meeting will be held in two or three weeks to determine the next step.

Questioned about long-term strategies, Stewart pointed to plans to upgrade the roadway from Ocho Rios to Montego Bay. He also disclosed that new measures would be formulated to govern the activities of event promoters.

“We’re still going to be meeting with the promoters ahead of their events, and they will have to abide by several stipulations, including giving us a site plan how they will operate,” he said.

Social media was flooded with complaints on Saturday night about persons having to spend several hours caught in a traffic jam between Ocho Rios and St Ann’s Bay as the party at the government-owned property hosted Festival of Floats (FOF).

But while FOF might have been the main reason for the gridlock, Powell said there were other activities along the corridor.

One of the persons caught up in the traffic, Andrew Allen, told The Gleaner that it was pure chaos as he tried to make his way off the highway at the Mammee Bay roundabout as he journeyed from Kingston to Ocho Rios.

He was stuck at the roundabout for about an hour, with easterly and westerly traffic at a standstill. Allen eventually went back on the highway, exited at Golden Grove, travelled through Colegate and Fern Gully, only to be confronted by another traffic jam going down Milford Road into Ocho Rios.

“General indiscipline of motorists was a major contributing factor. It was not just the taxi operators who were at fault. The police just could not cope,” he said.

A 20-minute drive from Ocho Rios to St Ann’s Bay lasted up to three and a half hours in some instances.

Several workers waited in vain for their assigned vehicle to pick them up and had to seek alternative means of transport.

Others were forced to walk for long distances, from Ocho Rios to Drax Hall, and even farther to St Ann’s Bay, The Gleaner learnt.

On Sunday, the police beefed up traffic-enforcement manpower and pledged to monitor vehicular flow on Easter Monday, a national holiday.