THE vision statement of the Municipality of Portmore, The Sunshine City, states: “Our mission is that, by 2020, Portmore will be a world-class city, with harmonious prosperous communities, exploring new frontiers of governance and ensuring a sustainable socio-economic environment.”

It’s only a couple months before Portmore celebrates 12 years with municipal status, with little over four years before we get to the 2020 deadline. The municipality is no closer to being a world-class city than it was in 2003 when the idea was conceptualised. This reality is largely aligned to the fact that the political representatives in the Portmore Municipal Council have lost sight of the reason the late George “Mr Portmore” Lee and the then citizenry fought for self-governance in the first place. The current inhabitants of the seats on the Municipal Council have lost sight of the people’s agenda and have only been looking out for their own political futures.

Since being given municipal status in 2003, the state of the infrastructure in Portmore has not been more deplorable and disorganised than it is today. This can be attributed to the selfish nature of the politicians who are responsible for governing Portmore and their attempts to stay in power forever. The city arguably has more building code violations than any other major town in Jamaica. These building code violations are in large part responsible for the high level of mosquito breeding within the municipality’s boundaries. Out of fear of being voted out, councillors, especially those in Greater Portmore, have turned a blind eye and, in some cases, have regularised structures that have been constructed over drains causing water to settle, thus causing breeding of mosquitoes.

No real blueprint for development

More than a decade, actually close to 12 years, with municipal status and yet there is no visible blueprint for the development of Portmore. Everyday a new housing community is constructed and no plan has been put in place to ensure a sustainable socio-economic environment.

Portmore is still in large part a dormitory community with transient inhabitants. With close to, if not just over 300,000 inhabitants, Portmore has neither the necessary infrastructure nor the needed innovative thinkers in the Municipal Council to create an environment to foster major business investment in the municipality. How will we become a modern city with the type of neophyte thinking we have leading the day-to-day running of the city? Can one honestly say Portmore will come even remotely close to the standards of any modern municipality, such as New York City, Chicago, Hagen and Toronto, with the type of leadership that currently exists? It is highly unlikely. Speaking of Hagen, wasn’t Portmore twinned with that city and were we not supposed to benefit greatly with a climate change park being built in the middle of the Portmore Town Centre? What is happening with these plans?

No hospital coming for Portmore

Plans to construct the Portmore International Hospital suffered a tragic death with the passing of late mayor of Portmore, George Lee. The country was last informed of the project when Member of Parliament for South St Catherine Fitz Jackson questioned the viability of a privately run hospital being built in the municipality. The concept of a hospital has been used by the PNP-dominated council to string voters along every time a local government election looms. The fact that this development has been promised to the people of Portmore since the first term of the late mayor, and is yet to even break ground, highlights the neglect and disregard for the people of Portmore. It is even more unsettling to know that, at a time when unemployment is at record levels in Jamaica, a project that was expected to employ hundreds of skilled and semi-skilled personnel has been stalled without sufficient reason. It is unfair that, after so many years of loyalty to the PNP, Portmore is still seen as a transient community and not the 21st-century city residents were promised.

Now for the honesty, there is no longer any plan in the pipeline to build any hospital in Portmore. The truth is, once again the mediocre leadership being offered to Portmore has decided, without consulting with the people, to scrap the plans to build a hospital and instead enter into a public/private partnership with the medical centre currently operating under the name “Portmore Hospital”. This is the most recent instance in what now appears to be a pattern of contempt being demonstrated for residents of The Sunshine City. Mr Portmore must be turning in his grave.

A new beginning for Portmore

Portmore is in dire need of new leadership. We cannot get up every day with the same old ideas and a lacklustre way of doing things, while expecting development to fall out of the sky. For Portmore to excel, to rise to its full potential, the positions of the current slate of majority councillors are untenable. The creation of a modern municipality will need innovative thinkers; and if we want to reach anywhere near a 21st-century city by 2020, the change will have to come soon. In the words of former Prime Minister Bruce Golding: “My purpose here today is not to curse the darkness, rather to shine some light. But we must recognise the darkness for what it is.” The truth is, Portmore has been living under a dark shadow for almost 12 years and it is now time for us to see the light. It is time for us to make a step forward to our full potential and leave mediocrity behind.

M George Gordon is the Jamaica Labour Party’s councillor caretaker for the Edgewater Division in Portmore and also the president of the Generation 2000 (G2K) Chapter in the municipality.