MEMBER of Parliament (MP) for St Mary South Eastern Christopher Brown has called for a “structural reset” to develop the constituency which he says lags behind the other two constituencies in St Mary, despite it geographically being the largest in the parish.

Brown’s reset is centred around land ownership, affordable housing, and the development of the Junction Main Road as an economic corridor.

“When we speak about the challenges of South East St Mary, we are not simply talking about a road here, a water pipe there, or a community centre somewhere else. We are talking about a constituency whose development challenges are structural; they are historical,” said Brown.

He was speaking in the House of Representatives last Tuesday during his contribution to the State of the Constituency Debate, during which he insisted the challenges faced by his constituents require a fundamentally different response.

Brown, who is also Opposition spokesman on science, technology and digital transformation, used the occasion to address the prime minister and members of his Cabinet, stating that his constituency requires something far more ambitious than the traditional approach to constituency development.

He said such an approach is a reset led by the State, supported by private investment, and “driven by a deliberate national commitment to change the economic and social conditions under which our people live”.

“We cannot understand the present economic reality of South East St Mary without understanding its history,” Brown told the Parliament.

He outlined that for generations, the economy of the constituency was organised around the plantation system, with sugar and banana dominating the economic landscape.

“Large estates controlled much of the productive land, and generations of our people provided the labour that sustained those industries. But sugar is no longer king, banana is no longer king,” he said.

The MP said too much of the plantation structure remains with land still largely outside the ownership and control of ordinary people; economic opportunities remain limited; and too many families continue to live on the margins of economic security.

On the matter of land ownership, Brown said it was time to give St Mary residents a stake in their own country. He pointed out that throughout the constituency, there are families who have occupied and cultivated lands for generations.

“Their grandparents lived on the land, their parents lived on the land; they have raised their children on the land. They have built their homes there. They have farmed those lands and invested their lives in those communities. Yet, many still do not possess legal titles to those very lands,” he said.

He suggested a massive, State-led land titling and land tenure regularisation programme in the constituency.

“We must identify lands that can be regularised, we must address long-standing ownership and tenure issues. We must examine how large tracts of land can be put to more productive use, and we must create real opportunities for ordinary families to own the lands on which they have built their lives,” said Brown.

Regarding housing, he pointed out that throughout the constituency there are families living in homes that require major repair — further worsened by Hurricane Melissa.

Noting that the price of housing is out of the reach of young people, Brown told his fellow lawmakers that “we cannot continue to address these conditions through the occasional distribution of a few sheets of zinc, a few bags of cement or a small housing grant”.

“Those things help — and I know they help, because we provide them every day — but they are not a housing development strategy,” he insisted.

The first-term MP posited that what is needed is a housing revolution in St Mary South Eastern.

“A deliberate programme, led by the State, the National Housing Trust, and the Housing Agency of Jamaica to upgrade, modernise and expand the housing stock of the constituency.

“We need to identify suitable lands for affordable housing. We need to create opportunities for working families to own decent homes. We need to improve the existing housing stock,” Brown added. He asserted that a serious housing programme can become one of the engines of economic transformation in the rural constituency.

Brown also made the case for the Junction Main Road to be at the centre of economic development there.

He cited that for generations, this road has been a critical corridor connecting Kingston and St Andrew with St Mary and the wider north-eastern region of Jamaica. He argued that the time has come for the important corridor to be seen as more than a road requiring the occasional patching.

“We must see it as an economic development corridor. Its modernisation must become part of a wider strategy to attract investment, stimulate enterprise and unlock the economic potential of north-eastern Jamaica,” he told Parliament while pleading with the prime minister to “give South East St Mary a fair chance”.

He argued that when a constituency is ranked at the back of the line in terms of economic measuring variables in its parish, when too many young people cannot find meaningful employment, when generations of families have lived on land they do not own, when too many households continue to struggle with inadequate housing, and when the economic structure of a constituency continues to reflect the inequalities of its plantation past, “we cannot expect the traditional model of constituency development to produce a fundamentally different future”.

“And so I say to the prime minister and the members of his Cabinet: Let us do something different for South East St Mary,” said Brown.