Portmore's long wait -City status model to be decided

ALTHOUGH CABINET early in February 2000 approved municipal status for the Portmore communities of south and south Eastern St. Catherine, it will be a while yet before citizens there actually start managing their own affairs.

Mr. Keith Miller, Consultant on Local Government Reform, Ministry of Local Government, disclosed this in an interview last week in which he gave an update on Local Government Reform.

Asked to comment on the current state of the granting of Municipal Status to Portmore, Mr. Miller said there were two issues to be addressed.

"One is the initiation of the Portmore Planning Authority, a local planning authority which will allow them to take some measure of control over the planning approval of developments within the area and all that. And that has to await the promulgation of a development order.

"But the question of Municipal Status itself, although it has been agreed in principle, we need to come up with a specific model", he said.

The question to be determined was whether the model would be something like Montego Bay, in which case they would have status, for instance as a city, but there would be no mechanism for carrying out any administrative function, because that is the Montego Bay model. "They have status but they are really managed by the St. James Parish Council. There is no provision for any independent administration of Montego Bay. And I don't think that there is a call for that", he said

"But to come back to Portmore, the idea is to grant them some level of local self-management but for the time being this is being seen as something that would be within the Parish of St. Catherine. In other words there is no move at this time to establish Portmore as a separate parish.

"Now in order to do that we have to come up with some new tiers of jurisdiction which we don't have in Jamaica at the moment, and so we are looking at models. Because you have models overseas where you have counties or you have different tiers of municipal management or local government management. You might have an authority but within that certain areas are granted independent jurisdiction over certain defined functions and that is what is being discussed."

The population of the Portmore communities is estimated at more than 300,000, and growing, with several housing projects under construction. It is estimated that a third of the workforce in the Corporate Area live in Portmore from which they commute daily via the Hunt's Bay Causeway or the Mandela Highway.  

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