Hinds optimistic Portmore parish pledge won’t fall through

Former Portmore Mayor Keith Hinds is hopeful that the resurrection of an old Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) promise to designate the sprawling St Catherine community as a parish will not remain stillborn after its more than decade-old gestation.

“I’m very very happy. I am ecstatic to hear that the municipality will become the 15th parish in Jamaica,” Hinds told The Gleaner on Wednesday.

The JLP’s manifesto pledges to allow Portmore to collect its own property taxes, have its own share of the Parochial Revenue Fund, as well as facilitate the development of a market, hospital, and upgraded schools.

The ruling party had pronounced on this vision under the leadership of its then leader Bruce Golding, who served as prime minister from September 2007 to October 2011.

Golding had said, in November 2007, that exploratory discussions were being undertaken with the Electoral Commission, the Attorney General’s Department, the Office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel, and the National Land Agency to actualise the plan.

Hinds was mayor of Portmore between 2007 and 2012. Like Golding, it was his vision to see Portmore become a parish.

“I was the mayor who got the tax office into Portmore through Minister of Finance Audley Shaw at the time. I was also the mayor that got all the lands that the council now owns through Minister Horace Chang, who was the minister of water and housing at the time.

The former mayor said that he “was pushing very hard” for a public hospital to be established in the so-called Sunshine City.

The Holness administration promises to oversee the creation of a Portmore Tech City Park that will facilitate the expansion of the business process outsourcing sector, tapping opportunities in the fields of animation and accounting.

The Gleaner was unable to get further details about the proposed plan as campaign spokesman for the JLP, Dr Nigel Clarke, deferred to Kamina Johnson Smith.

Hinds said that there are several locations that would be ideal for a tech venue although he had hoped that the lands in front of the Portmore Mall would have been developed into a transport centre and a park.

Another vision Hinds had was to transform the lands where the Portmore Municipal Corporation now sits into a multifaceted complex for several transactions.

“On that 16 acres of land, my intention was to have the tax office relocated there, the RGD (Registrar General’s Department) relocated there, an NIS (National Insurance Scheme) office to be there, the passport office to be expanded there, a fire station to be there,” he said.

“All of those persons would be tenants of the council, so the council would not have to maintain the building out of their revenues because the rentals would be able to maintain the bill,” he said.

Hinds is now mulling over the prospect of running again for mayor in order to make his dreams become reality.

“Many citizens have come to me and asked me that they would like to see me back in that area, and if my family would approve it, I would say yes.”

Hinds said that his return would depend on his wife, who he described as his “boss”, giving him the go-ahead.

nadine.wilson@gleanerjm.com