Western Parishes Water Supply and Resilience Improvement Programme Order Approved

The House of Representatives has approved the Public Procurement (National Development Project) (Western Parishes Water Supply and Resilience Improvement Programme) Order, 2025.

The Order, which was approved on June 17, seeks to declare that the Western Parishes Water Supply and Resilience Improvement Programme is a national development project.

“This project is a critical and strategic programme of the National Water Commission to address persistent challenges related to service reliability, system capacity and climate vulnerability in water supply systems across the northwest and north central Jamaica,” Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Hon. Fayval Williams, said.

Mrs. Williams noted that the Western Parishes Water Supply and Resilience Improvement Programme is a multi-phased initiative that will affect the parishes of St. James, Trelawny, St. Ann, Westmoreland and Hanover, and aims to improve access to potable water and sewerage services.

“This access is vital in supporting a sustainable economy. The programme intends to build critical infrastructure and create interconnectivity between treatment facilities along the north and western corridors, which will remove the National Water Commission’s constraints to distribute water across the network during outages, drought, changing climate or weather patterns and peak demand periods,” she noted.

The Minister argued that inadequate infrastructure and unreliable water supply threaten the development of communities, people and the long-term viability of the tourism sector and pose significant public health and environmental risks.

She further stated that the deficiencies in water supply along this major corridor undermine social economic stability and present an urgent threat to national development if left unaddressed.

“Conventional procurement timelines, particularly those involving open tendering and multi-stage evaluations, are ill-suited to the scale and urgency of the western parishes water supply and resilience programme. Undue delays could take place, and increased costs result from such a treatment given the scale of the programme,” Mrs. Williams said.

The programme is to be executed in four phases. Through these phases, critical infrastructure enhancements will be done in the parishes of St. Ann, Trelawny, St. James, Hanover and Westmoreland to increase water production and improve the reliability of the water supply, to meet the demand for potable water and sewerage services in the residential, commercial, tourism and institutional sectors of these parishes.

“More specifically, phase one of the project seeks to procure detailed engineering designs, goods and services, for the execution of the works; the replacement of the transmission main between the Martha Brae Water Treatment Plant, Trelawny, to the Great River Water Treatment Plant, St. James, to the Terminal Reservoir in Montego Bay, St. James,” Mrs. Williams said.

It also includes the installation of a transmission main between the Great River Water Treatment Plant, Hanover and Negril, Westmoreland and the rectification of any defects apparent during the execution of works for phase one.

Phase two involves the expansion of the Martha Brae and Great River Water Treatment Plants, while phase three involves the expansion of the Roaring River Venture Water Treatment Plant and the construction of associated transmission main in Westmoreland.

Phase four involves the construction of a new water treatment plant to be known as the Rio Bueno water treatment plant and a transmission main from Runaway Bay to Ocho Rios, St Ann.

For his part, Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, Hon. Matthew Samuda, said with the passage of the resolution, “We declare to the citizens of northwestern Jamaica that we indeed have a plan, that we have focused on their water supply and that their government has indeed committed the significant funds required to fix their water challenges.”

He also informed that the project is set to cost some $45 billion.