PEOPLE’S National Party’s (PNP) caretaker for St Mary Western Omar Woodbine has expressed confidence that he will take the seat from the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) Robert Montague who has held it since 2016.

Montague first won the seat in 2007 when he defeated the PNP’s Delano Franklyn. However, in his first defence in the 2011 General Election Montague lost to the PNP’s Joylan Silvera by 227 votes.

He returned in 2016 and swamped Silvera by almost 3,500 votes before defending the seat in 2020 with 3,382 votes more than the PNP’s newcomer Dr Jason Stanford.

Now Woodbine, another newcomer to national elections, says he plans to return St Mary Western in the winning column for the PNP.

“Too long we have been behind, we must go forward as a constituency. This is the time for change, and I am the change,” Woodbine told supporters at his official presentation as the party’s representative for the constituency on Sunday night in Stewart Town.

Woodbine charged that the roads in the constituency are the worst in the country.

“The only good road in St Mary is from Galina to White River; everywhere else is in shambles,” Woodbine told the hyped Comrades as he charged that the money allocated under the Government’s recently launched SPARK (Shared Prosperity through Accelerated Improvement to our Road Network) programme is not enough to fix all the roads in St Mary Western.

“[The money] $150-million [allocated to this constituency] cannot fix Jeffery Town to Guys Hill, Gayle to Labyrinth, Gayle to Bottom Road to Rio Nuevo, no Jacks River, no Wellington, no Mango Valley. The $150-million can do nothing, it’s the biggest scam ever run,” charged Woodbine as he argued that, “roads are necessity, not privilege”.

Stating that the parish is blessed to have agriculture as its backbone, Woodbine said while the people of the constituency want to move the sector forward they cannot do so because of the roads.

He charged that St Mary used to contribute heavily to Jamaica’s gross domestic product (GDP) through banana production but cannot do so now because the sector is in shambles.

Woodbine told the cheering Comrades that under the leadership of the PNP the glory days will return to agriculture in the constituency and the sector will attract more young people.

“We will modernise agriculture in the parish to make it attractive to the youth. Youth agriculture is the best thing to get into to make money. Agriculture is more sustainable than tourism,” declared Woodbine.

He said as the elected representative he will be pushing education and training programmes for the youth… for them to be trained in construction, electrical engineering, and plumbing.

“One of my initiatives is to have a second chance programme where youth who may have dropped out of school — whether by teenage pregnancy or other circumstances — we are going to get them back into the high school, and whether they are academically inclined or want to learn a skill, we will ensure it is done,” said Woodbine as he added that he will push skills training as a means for the young people to uplift their families.

“The youth cannot leave their home for $3,000 a day through the BPO [business process outsourcing] sector, and the construction sector, where they cannot even buy a patty as everything goes back to travelling,” said Woodbine.

He added that with training the young people will not have to “wait for the minister of labour to give out four or five farm work tickets. They will have a skill so they can be marketable locally and internationally”.

Woodbine urged the large group of Comrades to unite to move the constituency forward.

“Believe in me… let us put our differences aside and let’s walk the length and breadth of western St Mary. Let’s move Jamaica forward,” Woodbine declared.