Mayor calls on JPS to remedy street light issues

WESTERN BUREAU:

Councillor Michael Belnavis, the mayor of St Ann's Bay, St Ann, said central government will be asked not to make any payment to the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) for street lighting for the St Ann Municipal Corporation until the quality service required by the municipality is achieved.

"We are not going to pay anything to JPS until they sort out the situation with street lights because the entire parish is sick and tired of JPS not fixing the lights and not giving us more street lights;" said the mayor. "All the councillors here are in agreement that we need to have street lights sorted out for the parish of St Ann."

The mayor was responding to questions from the media following the municipal's recent two-day retreat at the Melia Braco Village, in Trelawny.

In outlining the way forward, Belnavis warned his colleague councillors that if they are to achieve success, it cannot be business as usual.

"The councillors will be responsible to show and work on a business plan for their division and committee chairmen will be asked to give us their vision on how they are going to move things forward," he said.

"They'll have goals to work with, which were not done before. They would just go in and do what they want to do and that was that, now they'll have goals to work with and they will be monitored and managed and be held accountable for their actions."

Belnavis also spoke to the challenges facing the corporation in regards to providing water, which he said is adequate but is being hampered by harnessing issues.

"It is time for thinking out of the box, time to formulate plans to pipe water from springs," the mayor said. "In some instances, it may be just to provide standpipes in some communities."