Published on : Tuesday, April 2, 2019
To quote Bartlett, “The town of Somerton holds the rich cultural history of some of the most celebrated Jamaicans such as former Prime Minister PJ Patterson, former Governor General Sir Howard Cooke’s family, Lennie Little-White, renowned filmmaker, Ms. Violet Neilson former Speaker of the House of Representatives and Bishop Herro Blair. Perhaps the most celebrated of all is Grammy award winning singer Jimmy Cliff who still lives in Somerton and even filmed some of his greatest work here. We are excited about this history that has helped to fashion the community and can be positioned and leveraged as a major tourism attraction and generate economic growth.”
Minister Bartlett made the declaration at the formal groundbreaking for the Somerton to Fording road rehabilitation project yesterday i. e. March 28, 2019. The project will loo after the restoration work on the roadway from fording to the Somerton square. This will be named the Jimmy Cliff highway. The common scope of work will comprise road signage, building drains and asphaltic concrete repairs and overlay.
“The community needs to now be repositioned, it needs to be reimagined and today represents the start of that reimagining. We are going to doing as series of infrastructure work aimed at preserving the rich cultural history.”
“We are going to develop a Jimmy Cliff museum and restore the waterfall where Jimmy Cliff frequented. So the aim is to create Somerton as an important tourist attraction around Jimmy Cliff and that will bring pilgrims and fans from all over the world who have been inspired by his accomplishments.”
Tags: Hon. Edmund Bartlett, jamaica