JUST OVER a month ago, a working group was appointed by the Prime Minister to design a plan for the re-development of downtown Kingston. The assignment aroused out of a meeting between the Prime Minister, the KSAC, the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development, the JCC and the PSOJ on matters concerning out of hand street vending and the decay of the heart of the nation's capital.
The report of the working group chaired by Dr. Vincent Lawrence, who heads the Urban Development Corporation, was delivered to the Prime Minister last week. It is time for action now.
Banker St Aubyn Hill, who has being brought home to fix NCB and who was a member of the working group, has expressed confidence that the plan can get downtown Kingston "fixed." Michael Ammar, JCC president, businessman in the area and an indefatigable lobbyist for the revitalisation of downtown, is confident that, "if accepted, the plan would go a far way in solving the problems downtown". We now wait to hear from the Prime Minister. The working group was given a tight turn around time of just one month. We expect the Prime Minister to respond to their report with equal alacrity.
The problems of downtown are critical and are well documented. Mr. Hill went so far as to say, if we don't get Kingston fixed "we won't have a country." The city, it is fair to say, has defeated the KSAC as municipal manager. With Local Government elections due by the end of March, the role of the KSAC, the Parish Councils, and the whole system of Local Government is up for review. A programme of Local Government Reform has been limping along for several years under several Ministers. Portia Simpson Miller, appointed as Minister after the October 16, 2002 general election, is yet to make her presence felt. The high-powered meeting which set up the working group was chaired by the Prime Minister who, in effect, is now in charge of the process.
The problems of downtown Kingston are symptomatic of the problems of the country at large. Street vending has grown completely out of hand to the detriment of other users of the space. And efforts to regulate vending have failed. Disorder and lawlessness rule. Kingsley Thomas, Chairman of the NHT, has called for action against extortion which "now permeates the economy". Downtown Kingston is the home of extortion and not just bleeding the larger formal businesses but also targeting vendors in the markets and on the streets.
The Prime Minister's intervention as Head of Government, we must hope, reflects a realisation by himself and the Government he leads that arresting and reversing the rot in the heart of the nation's capital, as a matter of urgency, is a vital step in the revitalisation of the whole country.
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