Prime Minister Andrew Holness has vowed to bring prosperity to the people of South East Clarendon by fixing the local economy so that residents can live, work, do business, raise their families, and experience prosperity in their community.

Holness stated that this entails dividing the proceeds from the national economy fairly across the country, as the government did in St Thomas, particularly the Southern Coastal Highway Improvement Project (SCHIP) to facilitate easier commutes to other parishes.

“You are going to see a tourism boom. You are going to see a business process outsourcing boom. You are going to see an agricultural boom. You are going to see a mining boom, and once that begins, more people will get employed, more people will have income, and people can take care of themselves,” Holness said while speaking at the South East Clarendon Constituency Conference on Sunday.

He said this entails putting in main trunk lines for internet, big water mains for water, proper power lines and fixing the roads leading into the communities so that people can start to experience real prosperity.

“This parish has a large agricultural base. You have a large mining base. You have a large fishing base. And recently, you have the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal, which is somewhere off the coast, and you have the bauxite terminals. So you have the makings of a strong economy already.

“What we must now do is, one, fix your roads, your critical roads, and we have started that kind of peer distribution through the Shared Prosperity through Accelerated Improvement to our Road Network (SPARK) programme, where we are allocating 10 roads, approximately, to every MP. But there is another allocation of the SPARK programme, which is now for strategic roads, main corridors that connect communities together. That’s the second phase of the SPARK programme, so many of the critical roadways that connect you – those roads are going to be repaired,” Holness added.

The prime minister also revealed that the government had announced a $10 billion programme this year for water and a $150 million project in the constituency of Central Clarendon, which will also affect the constituency of South East Clarendon. “This will give thousands of people in the parish and in this constituency a more reliable water supply. Remember, it was this government that started the process of putting in your pipes in and around this area. We are going to make further allocations to fix the problem that you are having with the sea line intrusion.

“Secondly, you have an asset sitting down here called Vernam Field, and we have the plans already. We put in place a team of consultants who studied it and gave us a plan. But when you look at the country’s air assets or airport assets, we decided that we are going to go first with the development of a new airport in Negril because, from a strategic perspective, it gets the tourists into that side of the island very quickly. So once that has started, the next airport asset that we are going to develop, which we already have the plan for, is Vernam Field,” Holness continued.

He stated that Vernam Field will create new employment opportunities for young people in the constituency and all the constituencies in Clarendon and outlined that the government will be targeting aircraft maintenance, repair, and operations.

“That is where all the airlines carry aeroplanes to get maintained and repaired. Currently, you have such operations in Honduras. You have them in other Latin American countries. But because Jamaica is so centrally located, we can have that kind of operation here, and I know that we have the technical expertise to do it, and we have the people who we can train to do it, so that is going to be a new industry that we are going to develop for your parish and specifically to help the people here,” Holness added.