KINGSTON, Jamaica — Opposition Spokesperson on Culture, Creative Industries and Information, Nekeisha Burchell, says Jamaica must stop treating culture as a “side conversation” and begin recognising it as serious infrastructure capable of reviving struggling rural communities and restoring economic life to forgotten parts of the country.

Making her maiden Sectoral Debate contribution in Parliament under the theme “Culture Is Not Decoration. It is Infrastructure,” Burchell argued that many rural Jamaican communities, once sustained by industries such as banana cultivation, bauxite mining, rail transport and agricultural trade, have experienced severe economic decline following the collapse or withdrawal of those sectors.

“There are communities across Jamaica that once had economic life flowing through them,” Burchell said. “The railway passed through them. Banana trucks moved through them. Agriculture sustained them. Small businesses survived because industries existed around them. But after many of those systems disappeared, economic life dried up and entire communities were left struggling to redefine themselves.”