Burchell ready to take development to Garlands, eyes agro-processing
Published:Saturday | September 6, 2025 | 12:09 AM
WESTERN BUREAU:
Nekeisha Burchell, the member of parliament (MP)-designate for St James Southern, plans to hit the ground running once she is officially sworn in, with plans for the first 100 days that include the provision of p0table water to communities without running water.
Burchell, a first-time MP and the first woman to be elected in the traditional farming area, won the constituency for the People’s National Party (PNP) in Wednesday’s general election where she defeated the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) Homer Davis, who was seeking a second term representing the constituency in the nation’s Parliament.
“I absolutely must hit the ground running where water is concerned. Water is life, and most of the communities in South St James do not have proper potable water coming into their homes. So I need to get into the research and speak with my engineers to look at what is possible,” said Burchell.
“If people can get water out of deserts, why can’t we get water from South St James where we have so many water sources?” she asked. “Currently, we are pumping water out of St James into St Elizabeth and Westmoreland at two different points in the constituency, and the communities that have those water sources do not have water in their homes.
“That (water) is going to be my number-one fight for South St James, and that will not wait for my first 100 days in office,” she added.
RESIDENTS’ COMPLAINTS
In March this year, residents of St James Southern complained about having no access to water in their homes from as far back as the 1980s. Those complaints followed an announcement in 2023 that some 15,000 residents of the constituency would benefit from an $800-million water supply infrastructure project over three years. That project started on April 1, 2024.
Burchell also outlined plans to develop an agro-processing hub in her hometown community of Garlands, which she will make full use of for the various crops grown in the farming community.
“I want to jump into the agro-processing opportunities that are available to our people, and I also need to help them to identify steady markets that will take our crops so that we are not losing a lot of it to spoilage. Agriculture is a big thing that I am going to be looking at for Garlands, my home, so that we can bring in employment and earn from our soil that has been so good to us,” she said.
“I have been talking to the people about how we can move up the value chain, because we plant a lot of pineapples, bananas, yams, plantains, turmeric, and ginger. I want to see how we can activate our cold-storage facilities and our sorting facilities, so that we are not just selling pineapples at $30 a pound,” she continued. “We can now look at how we can create purées, jams, and juices, and bottle them and send them to the world as coming from Garlands in South St James.”