FALMOUTH, Trelawny — Incumbent Trelawny Northern Member of Parliament Victor Wright is brimming with confidence that he will be returned to the seat whenever Prime Minister Andrew Holness calls the next general election despite his current dispute with Sugar Company of Jamaica (SCJ) Holdings.

The elections are widely anticipated to be called later this year.

While the SCJ is unwavering that Wright owes it just over $3.6 million in rent and for electricity, the parliamentarian is adamant that he has paid his bills.

“I have been out in the constituency and I am getting more persons expressing disgust at how the SCJ Holdings and the prime minister have dealt with the matter. I was a legitimate employee of the Sugar Company of Jamaica Holdings Limited, and I was given the house. It is a legal matter so I won’t comment further,” the People’s National Party (PNP) MP told the Jamaica Observer.

He did, however, say he has meetings scheduled with the permanent secretary in the agriculture ministry to try to “amicably” resolve the matter outside the public domain.

“At the appropriate time I will announce what the conclusions are,” Wright said.

Ironically, leading up to the 2016 general election, the Trelawny native was campaign manager for JP Whyte, whose candidacy for the seat had to be withdrawn after he was slapped with a payment demand notice by the Tax Administration Jamaica for $17 million in taxes which it said was owed by Whyte’s civil engineering company, Equilibrio Jamaica Limited.

Wright was consequently announced as the candidate to replace Whyte by the then Portia Simpson Miller-led PNP. He went on to defeat the JLP’s Dennis Meadows by a margin of just over 400 votes.

The Trelawny Northern MP told the Observer that this time around, he will increase the margin of victory.

“I am confident that after the elections, whenever the prime minister chooses to call it, that I will deliver North Trelawny for the People’s National Party, and I am confident that the margin will be increased over the last election, for two reasons. One, when I came in, in 2016, I was fairly unknown with no track record, but over the last four years I have [had] the opportunity to really prove to the people of North Trelawny that I can deliver for them as their Member of Parliament,” Wright noted.

The first-term MP, however, expressed disappointment “at the condition in which some elderly [people] live in the constituency”. He said much of his attention will be paid to providing houses for senior citizens during his new term as Member of Parliament.

“We will win the next term and one of the planned programmes for the next term is going to be houses for the elderly. I have come to figure that they would have struggled for most of their adult lives to achieve… some of them, basically a ply house in their early 60s, late 50s and in their 70s and 80s, those houses would have been in deteriorating condition. We are going to have a massive programme to assist as much as possible, not to build a one house and to say we have built a house, but there will be a systematic programme to improving the lives of the elderly and constituents, generally,” Wright promised.

“The second thing I am going to try to do is to improve the social amenities, such as hard courts for sports, et cetera .

“Another thing that I want to do is I want to prepare the youths in this constituency to take in the new economy; by doing that, we will have specific programmes geared towards where we think the economy will be and prepare the youths to take on those jobs,” he said, adding that he also intends to continue the land-titling programme.

Wright listed educational programmes, sponsorship of agricultural, sporting and other social activities, and road repairs among his major achievements during his four-year stewardship of the constituency.

“One of the most significant ones that I am proud of is the contribution I have made to the education of youths and also adults in the constituency. This is manifested by innovative programmes, such as our adult reading programme where we teach adults to read in the privacy of their homes.

“We had our CSEC [Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate] classes, where we paid for four or more subjects for anyone that wants to take it, and I am happy to say that this class is oversubscribed. Children are now able to do their exams; this is our second year running. We also have a skills training programme to train the students in 10 skills,” he said, adding that the programmes are ongoing and are funded significantly by the Constituency Development Fund, 30 to 35 per cent of which he has dedicated toward the programmes annually.

But, while he trumpeted the roads he has repaired in the constituency, he conceded that the 14-mile pothole-riddled road from Falmouth to Spring Vale is in dire need of rehabilitation.

Wright lamented that his consistent lobby for Government to address the corridor has fallen on deaf ears.

“That stretch is a project that has to be funded by central Government. I think that this constituency has been treated unfairly by the Government, and so we haven’t achieved much. I have advocated every single parliamentary discussion I can have. Currently, there are questions on the table for the prime minister to answer as to why we have been ignored with this road. I have come to realise that the condition of this road is the number one eyesore. Although it is inherited, I am not going to blame my predecessors; I am going to say that the Government should find the resources to make this road accessible to persons,” Wright emphasised.

He went on to say that he is disappointed that, in allocating funds to rehabilitate adjacent roads, the Government “still continue to ignore this road”.

“I agree that it will take a significant amount to repair… $1.2 billion is what I heard. I understand that we may not get it all at once, but I am calling for more resources to have this road repaired,” he insisted.

But motorists in the communities surrounding the Falmouth to Spring Vale road blame Wright’s PNP for also neglecting the road when they formed the governing administration.

On the Wakefield to Friendship stretch, the Observer caught up with retired cop Thurston Campbell, who was slowly manoeuvring the pothole-filled road in his Toyota Corolla motor car.

“From Martha Brae to Bunkers Hill [it] cannot be worse. The people from Bunkers Hill now are trying to avoid the road from here to Falmouth, by driving around the Good Hope Road,” he noted.

Soon after, a biker who identified himself only as Nalvin, was also seen nimbly navigating his way along the thoroughfare.

“It [road] is very nasty because mi come here about two weeks ago and mi can’t even ride. It’s the first day I am riding out. I can’t even ride a bike on it, let alone drive on it,” he argued.

Before reaching the two road users, auto mechanic Aldin Murray, who was busy replacing front-end parts on a Nissan AD wagon motor car, disclosed that the majority of his clients present with the same vehicle problems.

“Most of the work I get is to replace front-end parts that get lick out on the bad roads,” the mechanic said.