Russell presses for national plan to close Jamaica's urban-rural gap

Opposition spokesman on rural and community development Dr. Kenneth Russell is calling for a coordinated national strategy to narrow Jamaica's urban-rural divide.

Speaking after his first sectoral debate, Russell said the opportunity to address an issue rooted in his own rural upbringing felt both exciting and weighty. He described visible disparities along routes from the more developed St. Ann coast inland toward communities such as Higgin Town, Claremont, and Nine Miles, where roads deteriorate, housing thins out, residents carry water, farmers head to fields, and mobile phone service often fails.

Russell noted that while minimum wages may be the same in St. Ann's Bay and Nine Miles, rural residents spend far more on transport and other costs to reach services concentrated in larger towns. He argued the problem extends across all rural Jamaica, not only his St. Ann constituency, and cannot be solved through constituency development funding alone. He referenced colleague Dennis Gordon's point that the J$20 million constituency development fund leaves too little for infrastructure, with one road repair example suggesting a 15-year timeline.

Russell urged labour, social security, education, agriculture, and other agencies to work together on water, electricity, connectivity, and roads rather than delivering scattered projects in isolation. He said rural development lacks a clear national strategy and called for annual parliamentary reporting, with the aim that countryside residents should not pay an effective premium to access basic services.

Citing government STATIN data, Russell said rural poverty stands at 11.5% compared with 3% in Kingston, meaning rural residents are about four times more likely to live in poverty. Child poverty in rural areas is 22% and adolescent poverty 24%, with national poverty declines moving more slowly outside urban centres. He linked this to larger families, higher dependency levels, subsistence farming, and repeated hurricane, storm, and drought shocks that force many farmers to restart without insurance.

Russell also raised concerns about very small rural schools where principals often teach as well, weakening administration; the decline of community and youth organisations; and resource extraction through mining and tourism that benefits industries more than local people. He said responsibility is shared between citizens and government, but the State must provide stronger support, including equipped community centres with internet access and better parish roads so farmers and entrepreneurs are not held back by poor transport.