MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Prime Minister Andrew Holness has told the Manchester Municipal Corporation that before congested Mandeville can contemplate becoming a city, good order and a proper development plan need to be in place.

“… The town is going to go through a rapid phase of construction and change,” said Holness.

“I would say to the parish council [municipal corporation] that you need to employ serious town planning resources to develop your master plan…,” the prime minister said while addressing the ground-breaking ceremony for a business process outsourcing (BPO) complex in Mandeville on Thursday.

“You need to set the foundation for a rational plan of development that will include your traffic flow, proper parking, proper markets and so forth — and then put it to the private sector to say build according to this plan,” he added.

The Kenneth “Skeng Don” Black-led K and T Development BPO complex, which is estimated to cost $1.2 billion, is being funded by the Development Bank of Jamaica and National Commercial Bank. It is being constructed by China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) at Bloomfield on the outskirts of the Mandeville town centre.

Responding to mayor of Mandeville Donovan Mitchell’s continued push for the town to become Jamaica’s third city, Holness said it needed total reorganisation.

“… There is nothing stopping Mandeville from becoming a city. I want you to vision for a moment Mandeville, a city with high-rises, a new skyline, lovely parks and municipal facilities, proper parking, orderly streets and thoroughfares and boulevard, fantastic shopping and dining opportunities, and facilities for work and industry and education. Can you imagine a Mandeville like that? If it were to happen within the next eight years in time for vision 2030, you would then begin to realise that the building pace would have to increase far more than it is now,” he explained.

“We would have to be doing in Mandeville over a 100 new buildings per year and that would require a total reorganisation of the town because the town, when it was originally conceived… was never planned,” he went on.

But Holness said many of the country’s towns were never planned.

“They were streets with a little bit of offshoot here and there, and there was no coordination,” he said.

“You have residential mixed up with commercial, mixed up with industrial. There is no planning for parking; it is a nightmare for the local authorities and the municipal authorities [need] to figure out how we order the town, collect garbage. [It is] total chaos,” he lamented.

Pointing to an aerial view of the town of Mandeville, Holness said the town needs organisation.

“… Immediately you see chaos, disorder, disorganisation. We want to change all of that,” he shared.

Holness, meanwhile, lauded Black for his investments in the BPO sector.

“At the end of this process what you see here will be totally transformed. You would have created value in the economy, you would have created opportunities for other people to transform their lives, and you would have made us one step closer to the vision of Mandeville — the prosperous metropolis with the glittery skyline, the well-built buildings that are purposeful in their structure,” he said.

He said before the onset of COVID-19 the BPO sector employed about 48,000 Jamaicans.

“As a result of the joint efforts coming out of the pandemic we are now at 54,000 people employed in the industry. I suspect it might be a little bit more given the other BPOs that I have opened up recently,” he opined.

“The industry now occupies 2.2 million square feet right across Jamaica and I gather that there is over 200,000 square feet that was completed last year, so rapidly we are building out,” disclosed Holness.

He said over 300,000 square feet of building space is to be completed this year for BPO facilities.

“The industry is no longer a call centre industry only; maybe 10 years ago that would have been a large part of the industry,” he said.

“The industry now involves what we call knowledge services, and Jamaica is well-placed to be involved in the knowledge service industry… Jamaica is entering all the levels of the BPO industry,” he stated.