Montego Bay Mayor seeks to form advisory committee

Jamaican coastal city Montego Bay's Mayor Homer Davis seeks to form an advisory committee to forge greater linkages between the St James Municipal Corporation and the local business community in a bid to foster a more orderly development of the western city.

While speaking at the inaugural staging of the Business Process Industry Associations of Jamaica (BPIA) Presidents' Forum at the Usain Bolt's Tracks and Records in Montego Bay, St James Davis said that he is looking at putting an advisory committee together to advise the office of the mayor as it relates to the orderly development within the city because this is what obtains elsewhere.

"You can't have a municipality that is not joined with the business sector and vice versa," he said.

According to Davis, many of the problems that are now affecting the parish could be more effectively addressed if a collaborative approach was taken.

"I know that there are lots of activities taking place in the form of transportation, in the form of overcrowding in some areas of the city, in the form of informal settlement as a result of the influx of persons coming into the city to seek employment," Davis noted.

He said that there was the need for stakeholders to discuss how these issues are going to be dealt with.

"These happenings have an effect on the city's infrastructure, transportation, roads, sewage, garbage, and water," he added.

The mayor extended an invitation to BPIAJ President Gloria Henry to attend the monthly meeting of the St James Municipal Corporation in November.

“We accept that invitation and you will see us there,” Henry said.

While speaking on the occasion Councillor Davis bemoaned said What he discovers when he travels is a connection between the business communities and the municipalities. "I don't think we have that connection the way in which w] should. There is a distance... it's them, the business, and us, the administrators,” he said.