JAMAICA Agricultural Society (JAS) president, Senator Norman Grant, says that the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC) should be split into separate local authorities, to protect the interest of its rural communities.

In a submission to the Joint Select Committee (JSC) reviewing recommendations on local government reform at Gordon House yesterday, Grant said that the split was necessary to stem the drainage of wealth from rural St Andrew into Kingston.

“There should be a separation of the parish of Kingston from St Andrew, with Kingston treated like a city and St Andrew given the status of a rural municipality,” Grant said.

He gave this as an example of his proposal for a general change in structure of Local Government to towns and rural municipalities with their own directly elected mayors to protect the rights of rural communities.

But former KSAC councillor and current MP for Central Kingston, Victor Cummings, disagreed with the proposal stating that with handicaps, like its small population, Kingston could not stand alone.

“I take strong issue with the separation of Kingston and St Andrew,” said Cummings, considered the front-running PNP candidate for possible direct mayoral elections in the Corporate Area.

“I am talking from experience, having been a councillor at the KSAC. Kingston, by itself, cannot stand alone because, number one, the population base isn’t there and in addition (there are problems of) resources and all of that,” Cummings added.

He said that by separating the two parishes, the process would be creating new management problems, which is what it was hoped that it would solve.

Grant said that in its current structure, local government focuses on the towns, “and most times the mayor takes the image of being the mayor of the urban folks at the expense of the rural folks, even if the sitting mayor is a representative from a rural town”.

He said that the system needed to be changed and suggested the establishment of rural municipalities and towns, instead, under a rural municipal council act.

“This unique form of local governance could lead to a reversal of the trend that has developed over many years where the wealth that has been created in the rural countryside has matriculated to other towns at the expense of rapid rural advancement,” he said.

The committee is chaired by Minister of Local Government and Environment Dean Peart who wants to have a report ready by next Wednesday’s final meeting, after only four meetings.