PRIME Minister Andrew Holness on Wednesday charged that the country would have ‘certainly collapsed’ if it was under the governance of the People’s National Party (PNP) during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking at the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) handing-over ceremony for 50 trucks and 10 bikes, the prime minister praised the stewardship of his Administration, which he stressed has been helping the country to recover to pre-pandemic levels.

“If this pandemic had hit any other government, the prospect of collapse of the government would be real. If this pandemic had hit a PNP government, the country would have certainly collapsed and I want them to come out and contradict it,” he said.

“By virtue of what they said in Parliament, on record, about how we should have managed the pandemic, to spend more — not on your garbage trucks — that was never what they were asking us to spend on. You go back and look at the record and see where they were advocating for more to be spent on garbage trucks,” Holness added.

Admitting that the country is returning to normal and recovering very quickly, Holness said, “The story of the pandemic has not yet been written and how the Government had to walk a tight rope to manage lives and livelihoods and we had to make some tough decisions and that’s why you elected us,” he said.

Holness noted that during the pandemic, many budgetary priorities were made, which included cutting of expenditure for improvements of the NSWMA.

“It is as a result of these difficult choices that we were faced with, that we have made calculated decisions because we know what the effects of these decisions will be and what the future will hold as a result of the decisions we made. Today we are standing here as a result of those decisions making the point that we came through a pandemic, we are recovering,” he said.

“The country has forgotten about the pandemic already, we are looking forward to a great future and we are able to continue, the capital expenditure of not just the NSWMA, but right across all sectors of Jamaica. If that is not a major achievement of any government, I don’t know what to describe a major achievement,’ said Holness.

He noted that the Government made the right choices during the COVID-19 pandemic, by carrying the country safely through the pandemic to avoid a U-shaped recovery.

“This Government took the right decisions, carried us through the pandemic safely, and we are not having what is normally called a U-shape recovery. The last major shock that hit our economy in 2008, 2009, 2010, we did not recover, meaning we did not get back to the pre-2008 levels until 10 years after. I want them to argue with that,” he said.

“We are now experiencing a V-shaped recovery, what I like to call a tick recovery because the recovery is going to be better than where the fall off took place. We are almost back already at pre pandemic levels and that is because of not just good governance, but good government.”