Bryan believes enough done to earn buy-in from Annotto Bay
Published:Thursday | February 22, 2024 | 12:05 AMAndre Williams/Staff Reporter
Hugh Bryan, the incumbent councillor for the Annotto Bay division, is confident that his performance in the area is sufficient to convince residents to retain him as their representative in the St Mary Municipal Corporation.
Bryan said his drive to continue developing the rural township will also enable him to stave off any challenge and be re-elected and, by extension, take the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) a step closer to securing victory in the municipality.
“I just want to thank the persons who had supported me during my last election and during the term. I am looking forward again to the support of the persons of Annotto Bay division. I have done a lot of projects and my work speaks for itself,” Bryan told The Gleaner.
He said that any PNP supporter with a conscience would admit that he is the best councillor that Annotto Bay has ever seen.
“But because it is election [time], they will have to hide their conscience. I have done a number of projects, namely the Iter Boreale housing scheme recently, in collaboration with the National Housing Trust (NHT),” Bryan said.
He said a seawall project that is currently under way was initiated by him through the disaster preparedness mitigation programme in his first term as councillor.
Bryan was first elected in 2003 to represent the division, which is located in the St Mary South Eastern constituency.
In 2007, he defeated the PNP’s Valrie Walters to retain the division.
2012 LOST
He lost the seat to Dane Golding of the People’s National Party (PNP) in 2012, before returning in 2016 to wrest it back from Golding by 356 votes.
In 2016, some 4,616 electors, or 50.98 of those registered to vote, cast ballots.
“I have done a lot of roads. The Annotto Bay division is a low-lying coastal area and drainage is one of our main concerns. What I have done over the years is that a number of earth drains, I not only kept them clean, but converted a lot of them into concrete so that the water will flow more,” Bryan told The Gleaner.
He contends that there is an issue with garbage disposal practices as citizens fail to use the proper mechanisms.
This, he said, contributes to plastic bottles and other debris clogging the drains.
“Persons would tell you that Annotto Bay is a town that would often be flooded and I can’t recall the town being flooded in the last seven and a half years since I am here because I have cleaned the drains and ensured that the drains are kept clean,” he stressed.
Bryan also pointed to his collaboration with National Energy Solutions Limited (NESol) in the energy ministry, cheekily claiming that even his PNP opponent benefited from that effort.
“In that area, they never had streetlights and electricity so everybody had to run their light from the main come in, which is sometimes 800 metres ... . In that project, the former councillor got a streetlight at his gate, benefited by having his meter removed from out the front and put at his gate. A similar project was done in Crooked River and Dover,” Bryan said.
He told The Gleaner that there are four other areas he is hoping to give similar attention to if elected to serve another term – Gibraltar to Osborne, Enfield crossroads to Dry River, Fort George, and Fort Stewart.
Bryan said that farm roads have also been sustained through a collaboration with the Rural Agriculture Development Authority (RADA).
“May River, that is a road that has never been asphalted. That serves a primary school and over 200 residents. I have done a fair job. I would have loved to do more, but we can only work with the amount of allocation and resources that we have,” Bryan said.
He told The Gleaner that he is hoping for a peaceful campaign.
Come February 26, Bryan will be challenged by the PNP’s Knute Bartley this time around for the division, which has the largest number of electors (9,552) of the four in St Mary South Eastern.
The other divisions that make up the constituency are Belfield, Castleton and Richmond.