MANDEVILLE, Manchester — People’s National Party (PNP) incumbent Peter Bunting is defending his three terms as Member of Parliament (MP) for Manchester Central as he vies for another, with newcomer Rhoda Moy Crawford contesting for the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in the constituency.

“I am confident [of victory] because of the track record of myself, comrades, councillors and the team. Our constituency has really been outstanding in terms of the educational infrastructure we have put in during my terms,” Bunting told journalists yesterday after he was nominated.

“We added 2,000 new, quality high school spaces. We built a brand-new primary school. We added classroom blocks to multiple schools to reduce the overcrowding. We built three brand-new basic schools and a fourth is 90 per cent complete,” he added.

Bunting said approximately $100 million have been disbursed in grants and bursaries to students at all education levels, and that the employment of more than 2,000 people to the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector compensated for the fallout in bauxite.

“We went in search of a BPO company to be bases in Mandeville. After a lot of effort, we convinced Sutherland Global to come to Mandeville. They opened on Ward Avenue, employed 2,000 young people, more than compensating for the fallout in employment.”

“We see now with the continued enlightened political leadership, thousands of new housing solutions are opening up in Perth, Mount Nelson, private solutions at Bloomfield and so on. Central Manchester has indeed become a centre of excellence for the knowledge-based industries and people are now looking at it as a place of choice to live, work, raise families, do business and retire,” Bunting said.

Former JLP candidate Danville Walker, who had reduced Bunting’s margin of victory in 2011 to 539 votes, showed up in Mandeville yesterday in support of Crawford.

“Rhoda is the face of the future. Peter Bunting is the face of the past and that is what you have to understand about these elections. The JLP has enough people on the voters’ list to win this seat. You can either vote for the past or vote for the future. The future is the Labour Party. The future is Rhoda Crawford,” Walker said moments after Crawford was nominated.

Crawford was confident that she can unseat Bunting.

“There are several reasons why I remain confident and know that the people of Manchester Central will be sending me to Parliament to represent them. One, I am their daughter. The people of Manchester Central have raised me into the woman I am today. They know of my sincerity. They know that I am caring and long before applying for candidacy of the JLP, I have always been giving back to the community,” Crawford told journalists after being nominated.

“Secondly, for the past 31 years and more the PNP has had this constituency and there are several things that I have found wanting. There is the water crisis. I have had to be trucking water to communities, left, right and centre. The road conditions are terrible. You go into some communities, there are no streetlights,” she added.

She also sighted a telecommunications challenge in parts of the constituency.

“The Internet connectivity [is just not good]. Just the other day with COVID and children being at home, there were parents complaining that they had no Internet. Lines are not in those communities. From my own pocket I bought phone cards from both Digicel and Flow, and took into the communities,” she went on.

“Apart from that, there is a lack of adequate access to education and training. It is not that the Government does not have agencies like the HEART Trust/NSTA, and the SDC [Social Development Commission], but I am not sure that the political leadership that is currently here has done enough to educate the people,” she continued.

Crawford said there is also a need for more job opportunities in the constituency.

She told journalists that the JLP machinery in the constituency is ready, properly organised and working with the support of former candidates.

“The third reason is that I have the full support of Danville Walker, Sally Porteous, even Norman Horne and of course St Aubyn Bartlett, so our strategy is to ensure that we look at what they would have done well and we will mimic that… Where they went wrong, we are correcting those mistakes. We don’t intend to repeat it,” Crawford said.

Manchester Central has four divisions — Bellefield, Royal Flat, Mandeville and Knockpatrick — with just over 38,000 electors.