ALLIGATOR POND, Manchester — People’s National Party (PNP) aspirant for Manchester Southern Senator Peter Bunting has promised to deliver jobs and reliable Internet for young people in the constituency if he is elected and the party given the nod to form the Government at the next parliamentary election.

“I was up in Plowden and it is like when Digicel just came to Jamaica. I had to be walking around trying to find a signal with my phone all up inna the air. We need high-speed Internet all across south Manchester, both for students and for work,” Bunting told supporters at the PNP’s Alligator Pond divisional conference on Sunday night.

Bunting, a former member of the Cabinet and Member of Parliament for Manchester Central, pointed to the business process outsourcing sector boom in south-central Jamaica as a selling point to deliver on his job creation promise.

“The Comrades from Central Manchester can tell you that I am not just talk. When I was there I had the same vision to create jobs to compensate for the fallout from bauxite and I brought Sutherland to Ward Avenue and it then expanded to Spur Tree and it employed thousands of young people,” he said.

Sutherland Jamaica is one of the business process and outsourcing companies operating in the island.

Bunting, who lost the Manchester Central seat to Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) newcomer Rhoda Moy Crawford in the 2020 General Election, pointed out that entrepreneurship opportunities for young people is also a priority for him.

“We want to generate good jobs in south Manchester, so young people don’t have to leave [here]. We can get that through training and entrepreneurship, having loans for people who want to start their little business and using the high-speed Internet to facilitate that,” he said.

Bunting also reiterated that he intends to focus on community tourism development for the coast road along the near 30-kilometre Alligator Pond and Milk River stretch, similar to the product in Treasure Beach in St Elizabeth Southern, “where people can have their restaurants, villas, small hotels and can run their tours and everybody can make a good living out of that”.

In January 2014, then Tourism Minister Wykeham McNeill had promised to revisit and develop areas such as Gut River on the Alligator Pond to Milk River coast road.

Gut River bubbles to the surface at the base of steep limestone hills in Manchester Southern, just upland from the coastline.

Turning his focus to education, Bunting said his track record of building schools in Manchester Central is proof of what he is capable of doing for Manchester Southern.

“In two terms, [2007 to 2011 and 2012 to 2016], I built more schools in central Manchester than this JLP Administration has built in the entire Jamaica for the last two terms,” he said.

He took aim at the health-care system in Manchester, saying it was rundown to the point of embarrassment.

“We worked Labour Day at a basic school and the principal was telling us that the enrolment is about half the capacity and I made the comment that the young ladies not having as many children nowadays and one of the parents who was helping… said ‘we afraid of the hospital; last year when I went there and my baby died, I am afraid’,” he told his audience, claiming that the woman also expressed fear of maternal mortality.

“… Mothers who are dying in or before childbirth are 10 times [higher] today than what it was when the PNP left office,” he claimed.

Last year he had called for the resignation of Southern Regional Health Authority board, led by Wayne Chen, in light of a reported increase in maternal mortality rates.

The call followed the Ministry of Health and Wellness’ Population Health Status Report for the period 2000-2022 which showed the maternal mortality ratio at a high of 211.3 per 10,000 live births in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I feel so bad for Comrade John Junor who left such a fancy hospital in Mandeville, we used to call it the hotel. Nowadays people from Manchester are afraid to go there. Mothers are afraid to go there, because it is in such a disgraceful state,” said Bunting.

“This campaign is not just about winning the next election, this campaign is about rescuing Jamaica for the next generation, your children and your grandchildren,” he said.