FALMOUTH, Trelawny — Businessman Paul Patmore is fuming that since joining the People’s National Party (PNP), in order to contest the Trelawny Southern constituency in the next general election, he has been asked by the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) to relinquish the presidency of the Lorrimers Community Development Committee (CDC).

JSIF is undertaking the construction of a $106-million farm road project in the constituency.

According to Patmore, Lorrimers CDC had written to JSIF for the project and after the work started, he decided to run for the PNP.

“Around a month ago I was called and sent an e-mail by someone from JSIF that I need to step down as president because I am going to make the project look bad,” Patmore said.

“I am still the president of the CDC but they say they want to have it on paper that somebody else is the president because they don’t want to know that the politician is the president of the project,” he added.

JSIF Managing Director Omar Sweeney explained that JSIF works with community-based organisations but there is a code of conduct that if individuals are politically active for any party, “we cannot have you lead a community-based organisation because JSIF does not do projects under the auspices of politics”.

“He was the chairman of the community-based organisation. Everybody has a right to be politically active but we ask that if you become politically active that you step down from your leadership of the community-based organisation and elect another one. So the project was not taken away from the community-based organisation, what we asked is that Mr Patmore step down since he has become politically active as a part of the code of conduct,” Sweeney told the Jamaica Observer.

Furthermore, he pointed out, “This project is actually funded by the Caribbean Development Bank. It is an international agency and we cannot bring the project into disrepute or bring the funding agency unknowingly into any sort of political influence or those things.”

However, Patmore is accusing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) operatives in Trelawny Southern of urging JSIF to ask him to step down to weaken his influence.

“I know it was a complaint from the JLP because if Paul Patmore was the president for the CDC, it would give him too much strength, so they [JSIF] are joining with the JLP to cut my strength and I will be taking it up with my lawyer at a later date,” Patmore said.

“The project is now on its way, it was granted already. Since that time persons from the JLP have just come over and take over the project completely. There are some community work that should be done by some community members and these persons just put on their green shirts and they brand the place as a JLP project,” he charged.

But Sweeney insisted that JSIF is only interested in ensuring that “farmers who plant yam there have a decent road to do their work”.

“The important thing is that they have gotten the road now and we are implementing the project and so there may be feelings on the ground [but] I can’t really examine all of that. I am just really about getting the work completed,” Sweeney said, adding that Patmore had strongly lobbied for the road.

The scope of the project includes the construction of 500 metres of road, construction of retaining walls and drainage.

“It was a dirt road that the farmers were bringing the yam out on donkeys. And so what happens now is that a truck can actually go down on to the road and they can load the yam truck,” Sweeney said.