THE KINGSTON and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC) and the Kingston & St. Andrew Parish Development Committee (KSA PDC) yesterday received a big boost in their bid to develop a comprehensive plan for the redevelopment of Kingston and St. Andrew.
A US$256,000 grant is being pumped into the Citizen's Alliance Project aimed at the development of the plan, which will set the framework for the implementation of sustainable programmes that promote orderly development, economic growth and environmental management in the KSA. The KSA is first Caribbean area to get a grant from that body.
The grant is coming from the Cities Alliance Programme of the World Bank, a global coalition of cities and partners developed in 1999 to improve the lives of urban poor. Over the last three years, US$7.1 million has been granted to 70 cities in 20 countries with the latest principal funding coming partners, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) Habitat programme and the Canadian International Develop-ment Agency (CIDA), said World Bank representative, Errol Graham.
The plan, on which preliminary discussions began two years ago, is to be completed by 2004 and organisers and local partners, which include vendors associations and community based organisations (CBOs), are hoping to breathe new life and beauty into a city that is slowly choking on zinc fences, derelict buildings, haphazard and unplanned building developments, poor land and environmental use by the public and dirty surroundings.
Officials were quick to point out that work was already being done so this is not just another plan, which may be developed but not used, the way of some 200 other plans created to address the need for revitalising and improving the parishes.
They were also hoping to have a new development order governing Kingston and St. Andrew to replace the current order, which has been in use since 1966.
"Mr. Ammar likes to speak of the 252 different plans for the development of the Kingston and St. Andrew and we are hoping that today, we can roll those 252 plans into one and come up with one sustainable development," said Errol Greene, Town Clerk at the KSAC, which will be one of the implementing agencies.
He was speaking at yesterday's signing of the Grant Cities Alliance Partnership agreement between the KSAC, the parish Committee and the World Bank Cities Alliance Programme and the launch of the Citizen's Alliance project.
Both were backed by Local Government and community development Minister, Portia Simpson Miller and top officials from the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA), the PDC, the KSAC, the Kingston Restoration Company (KRC), the World Bank and CIDA during the ceremony at the Terra Nova Hotel in Kingston.
