KINGSTON, Jamaica – Mayor of Kingston, Senator Councillor Delroy Williams, says confidence among Jamaicans about the transformation of downtown Kingston is growing.

“There is transformation taking place and renovations in a lot of the streets downtown. If you look at Water Lane and other streets, a lot of property owners are investing in the renovation of their properties and they are putting them to commercial use,” Senator Williams said.

He was speaking on ‘Good Morning, Minister’ aired on Love 101 FM on Wednesday.

Senator Williams cited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, ROK Hotel, and GraceKennedy among the major players contributing to the downtown commercial district’s revitalisation and hailed the partnership with Kingston Creative, which has provided many of the murals painted.

“The vision is to transform downtown into a tourism city. That means replacement and renovation of a lot of the infrastructure, like sewage and water. We have started addressing some of the road infrastructure by creating softer streetscape with bricks,” he said.

Senator Williams explained that in addition to improving the city’s aesthetics, the design is believed to impact behaviour.

Meanwhile, the mayor said the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation will be embarking on a programme to provide more frequent collection of garbage in specific areas.

“We believe that having multiple collections during the peak hour period would assist us. Let’s say we collect garbage at 10:00 am or 11:00 am, then probably by about 1:00 pm there is another cycle, and then we would develop that kind of operation,” he outlined.

Senator Williams advised that he continues to lobby the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development for amendment of the laws to apply stiffer fines and penalties for improper garbage disposal.

“We need far better use of cameras so that we can identify where the problem is coming from. There is one argument that many of the store owners pay people to dispose of the garbage and those people take the garbage and they find what they have developed as minidumps and have been dumping there,” he said.

– JIS