WESTERN BUREAU:

Mayor of Montego Bay Homer Davis says that he is moving to establish an advisory committee to forge greater linkages between the St James Municipal Corporation and the local business community in a bid to foster a more orderly development of the western city.

"I am looking at putting an advisory committee together to advise the office of the mayor as it relates to the orderly development within the city because this is what obtains elsewhere," Davis said

Davis was speaking at the inaugural staging of the Business Process Industry Association of Jamaica (BPIA) President's Forum held yesterday at Usain Bolt Tracks and Records in Montego Bay.

"You can't have a municipality that is not joined with the business sector and vice versa," he said.

According to Davis, many of the problems that are now affecting the parish could be more effectively addressed if a collaborative approach was taken.

"I know that there are lots of activities taking place in the form of transportation, in the form of overcrowding in some areas of the city, in the form of informal settlement as a result of the influx of persons coming into the city to seek employment," Davis noted.

He said that there was the need for stakeholders to discuss how these issues are going to be dealt with.

"These happenings have an effect on the city's infrastructure, transportation, roads, sewage, garbage, and water," he added.