ST ANDREW, Jamaica — St Andrew East Central Member of Parliament Dennis Gordon says the challenges facing his constituency far exceed what can be addressed through current parliamentary budget allocations.

“The projection from NWA [National Works Agency] is that it takes $50 million to fix one kilometre of road. For me to fix, let’s say Chisholm Avenue, which is in a poor state, with the allocation, it’s going to take me 15 years to fix Chisholm,” he said, referring to the existing $3 million allocation for municipal road repairs.

Gordon was speaking at the Duhaney Park Divisional Conference on Saturday which was held at Edith Dalton James High School.

He argued that the available funding is insufficient to address the wide range of issues affecting residents, further pointing to the education sector.

“I have 12 schools— five high schools and seven primary schools.  But I have $10 million to share. The school population is over 7,000 persons. If you divide 7,000 into 10 million, you see the average per student from inner city, but yet we continue to say that our education system is failing. It must fail,” he said.

Maintaining that residents are receiving only the “crumbs” of what is needed, Gordon called for a reassessment of budgetary allocation.

“We have to fix our budgetary allocation. Because we put people first and people are the centre of what we do,” he said.