AS Portmore continues its lobby for parish status, Mayor Keith Hinds is hoping to also have the boundaries of the municipality extended.

According to the mayor, if his plans to extend the municipality's lines are approved, adding more houses would not become an issue.

"Hence the idea of a 15th parish," he said. "If that happens, we would see an expansion of land mass and the moving of boundaries."

This would essentially also mean splitting the parish of St Catherine in two.

"St Catherine is big enough to accommodate two parishes," Hinds said, while inferring that the member of parliament for the adjoining communities would not be opposed to the idea.

"I'm sure my colleague on the other side would not mind giving up acres of land," he said.

According to the parish council's website, St Catherine is the fourth-largest parish in the island accounting for 460.4 miles or 10.8 per cent of Jamaica's land area.

Hinds said that already two bordering communities in the Bernard Lodge Division -- Caribbean Estates and Morris Meadows/Grange Lane -- were clamouring to become a part of Portmore.

He added that although these communities are not classified as being in Portmore, their residents use all the amenities the community offers, including supermarkets and petrol stations.

Hinds also said that while the St Catherine Parish Council benefited from Caribbean Estates' building fees, the Portmore Parish Council had to deal with its sewage needs. He also expressed concern about garbage being dumped along the roads in some areas which do not fall under his purview.

"St Catherine is really a big parish and I think having some of these areas turned into the parish of Portmore (is a good idea). That way we can properly monitor so we don't have a dump being formed on the boundaries of our city that we cannot do anything about," he said.

Hinds noted that the need for affordable housing was the catalyst for the many building projects in the community, including Westmeade II -- a settlement of 124 two-bedroom, one-bathroom single-storey detached units -- for which ground was broken last Thursday. The Housing Agency of Jamaica also said it plans to embark on a second phase of the Portmore Country Club, following the overwhelming success of the first project that was developed by West Indies Home Contractors. Portmore Country Club Two, which is awaiting Cabinet approval, will consist of 108 two-bedroom, 2 1/2-bathroom townhouse units on 995 square feet each in a gated community.

"We want to regularise and build out areas that accommodate housing solutions that are affordable to Jamaicans," Hinds said.

Westmeade II will cost potential homeowners $8 million per unit. Managing director of the Housing Agency of Jamaica, Joseph Shoucair said that while no cost had yet been determined, he expected one unit of Portmore Country Club II to cost in the region of $10million-$10.5 million.

Meanwhile, Hinds said that a more pressing concern for him was the water supply to accommodate the houses that are being built but that measures were being put in place to address that.

"There are pipe-laying exercises now being done and it is my understanding that they are now preparing to pipe more water into the communities of Portmore," he said.

Hinds also expects that extending the boundaries will mean more land to develop businesses in the area. However, while he makes his case for Portmore to become a parish, there are still some basic amenities that the municipality does not possess. These include a hospital for which ground was broken some years ago but to date nothing further has been done.

Hinds told the Sunday Observer that a major issue was that the promised $89 million approved to fund the running of the council in the beginning was never "put in place", but said he hoped that at the least some of the health facilities in the community would be upgraded.

"I'm looking forward to the hospital, which would be a private hospital and (I am) still looking forward to the clinics we have here being upgraded to a type five clinic because... We do want the type of services that every citizen of Jamaica is entitled to."