15 Communities to Benefit under Inner City Project

A total of 15 inner city communities in the parishes of St. James, Kingston, St. Catherine and Clarendon are to benefit from major infrastructural development under the government’s Inner City Basic Services Project.
The project, which is being implemented by the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) will see the provision of reliable drinking water, improvement of sanitation, proper solid waste management, improvements to roads and walkways and the implementation of initiatives geared towards the reduction of crime and violence. Project financing will be provided by the World Bank at a cost of US$25 million.
Hundreds of residents of Flankers in St. James, which is one of the communities to benefit from the project, recently participated in a community meeting, where the final plans for the project were presented and residents had their questions, opinion and suggestions accommodated.
Community liaison officer for the project Paulette Dixon, told JIS News that in addition to infrastructural development for the area, provisions were also being made for an in depth micro-financing component, which should see several prospective entrepreneurs empowered to operate businesses.
“The project will be seeking to identify persons, who would want to start business and become entrepreneurs and provide the necessary business management training for these individuals so as to have them prepared to operate a business on their own,” Ms. Dixon told JIS News.
She noted that the entire community was enthused about the project, as observed from their comments at the meeting. “One thing that they are grateful for is that they got a chance to prioritize what their needs are and to come up with what they would want to see done in their community and so far, the feed-back has been great. Earlier they had a number of focus group discussions. based on the work being done on the ground, things are looking quite favourable”, Ms Dixon said.
She reported that one of the significant findings from focus groups discussions, was that the youth did not have adequate facilities where they could learn certain skills, hence a multi-purpose skills training centre was proposed, accepted and would be established soon, through the Inner City Basic Services Project.
Ms. Dixon pointed out that the project should be implemented in Flankers by May and was expected to provide temporary employment opportunities for several persons in Flankers and surrounding areas.
In addition to Flankers, other beneficiary communities are Brown’s Town/Passmore Town (Dunkirk), Jones Town, Federal Gardens and Whitfield Town in Kingston; Tawes Pen, Africa, Dempshire Gardens/Jones Avenue (Shelter Rock), Andrews Lane, Big Lane, Little Lane, Lauriston, Detroit and Knollis in St. Catherine; and Bucknor/Rectory Lane in Clarendon.