JAMAICA | Purkiss Draws First Blood: ‘Why Is Woodsville Still Waiting?’

New Eastern Hanover MP confronts Works Minister at Standing Finance Committee over bridge prioritisation that has left her constituency stranded for three years 

KINGSTON, Jamaica, march 7, 2026 - She arrived in Gordon House as a first-time parliamentarian. She left the Standing Finance Committee hearing this week as something else entirely — a formidable voice for a constituency that has been told to wait long enough.

Andrea Purkiss, the People’s National Party’s Member of Parliament for Eastern Hanover, made her debut at the Standing Finance Committee count for something. In her first major public confrontation since taking office, Purkiss placed Works Minister Robert Nesta Morgan squarely on the defensive, demanding to know why the Craig Mills Bridge had been prioritised for repair while the Woodsville Bridge — collapsed since Good Friday 2023 — continues to be passed over.

The question was pointed, the arithmetic damning: the Woodsville Bridge has been broken down since April 2022, when torrential rainfall first compromised its structure. It finally collapsed entirely on Good Friday 2023 — more than three years ago.

And still, the communities of Woodsville, Flower Hill, Hillsbrook and Bath Mountain wake up every morning dependent on a makeshift wooden bridge they built with their own hands, from fallen trees, because the state refused to act.

“Why was Craig Mills Bridge prioritised over Woodsville Bridge in Eastern Hanover, which has been broken down since 2022 and is a critical link to Mayfield Falls?” Purkiss put to Minister Morgan. It was not a rhetorical question. It was an accounting.

Mayfield Falls — one of Jamaica’s most authentic eco-tourism attractions, where visitors wade upstream through a natural river gorge shaded by bamboo and fern — depends on the Woodsville corridor for access.

Tour groups, rental cars, international visitors, even a French couple spotted by this publication navigating the rickety community-built crossing without realising the original bridge no longer existed — all of them gambling their safety on a structure the government has yet to replace. The economic bleeding to Hanover’s tourism belt has been real and ongoing.

WiredJa reported in January 2025 on the full scale of the crisis: over 1,000 residents cut off from normal access to schools, workplaces, healthcare and markets; a $75 million allocation announced in 2023 that disappeared into the fog of bureaucratic process; a first bridge design scrapped because engineers failed to account for the flow of the Cabarita River; and the National Works Agency quietly omitting Woodsville from its priority lists while other structures moved forward.

Mayor of Lucea Sheridan Samuels had described the situation bluntly as “a national disgrace.” The previous MP, Dave Brown, told constituents the bridge was “in procurement” — a phrase that became a cruel joke as years passed without a single concrete poured.

Minister Morgan’s response at the Standing Finance Committee offered at least a direction, if not a deadline: the Woodsville Bridge, he indicated, is expected to be addressed under the government’s Accelerated Bridge Programme, which is scheduled to begin this year.

For communities that have been living on promises since 2022, “scheduled to begin” will require more than assurances before it registers as relief.

But Purkiss’s intervention matters beyond the exchange itself. Infrastructure decisions — which bridge gets fixed, which community gets to wait another year — are rarely made on purely technical grounds.

They reflect political will, or its absence. By surfacing the Woodsville-vs-Craig Mills prioritisation question in a formal parliamentary committee setting, the Eastern Hanover MP has put the Ministry of Works on notice: she is watching the queue, she knows where her constituency stands in it, and she intends to be heard.

Eastern Hanover voted for change in September 2025. What they are owed is a bridge — a real one, on proper foundations, built by the state that has collected their taxes and accepted their patience for thirty-six months.

The Accelerated Bridge Programme, if it is to mean anything, must include the community that built its own crossing out of fallen trees because it had no other choice.

The wooden planks across the Cabarita River are not a testament to Jamaican ingenuity. They are a testament to government failure. Andrea Purkiss, at her first major committee hearing, made sure that failure was on the record.

—  WiredJa | wiredja.com  —