JSIF to Receive $2.35 Billion to Continue Social Intervention Projects

The Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) has been allocated some $2.35 billion in the 2010/11 Estimates of Expenditure, now before the House of Representatives, to facilitate continuation of a number of the Government’s social intervention projects and activities.
To this end, JSIF, since its implementation in 1996, has targetted responses to the needs of some of the society’s most vulnerable groups through the establishment of an efficient and demand driven mechanism to deliver basic services and provide infrastructure to the society’s marginalized; provision of resources to areas of basic social and economic and social services; and expansion of the Government’s institutional capacity to identify, implement, manage, and sustain community-based sub-projects. Since its inception, the twice extended project has, up to January this year, seen some 1,254 projects, valued at approximately $6 billion, being approved of which some 862 have been completed.
Jointly funded by the Government, the European Union, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and through private sector grants, the JSIF will focus on six main areas this year. They are: the Poverty Reduction Programme (PRP2); Hurricane Dean; the Basic Needs Trust Fund (BNTF); Inner City Basic Services Project (ICBSP); Rural Economic Development Initiatives (formerly National Development Project); Community Investment Project (CIP); and Community Crime and Violence Prevention (CCVP).
Anticipated targets under each area include: implementation of 21 community-based infrastructure sub-projects in Kingston, St. Andrew, St. Catherine, Clarendon and St. James under the PRP2; completion of rehabilitation works on five primary schools, seven basic schools, four health centres and three corridors of roadway, strengthening of the Jamaica Fire Brigade’s capacity and development of multi-hazard maps under the hurricane Dean component; continuation of basic infrastructure rehabilitation works at the Gayle market, St. Mary, Mavis Bank Health Centre, St. Andrew; Gibraltar Primary School, Paisley All Age School, and Homestead place of Safety under the BNTF.
Other targets include: completion of regularization activities for land tenure and illegal electricity connections, the implementation basic integrated water, sanitation, and drainage infrastructure, and rehabilitation of primary and secondary roads under the ICBSP; implementation of 12 agriculture /tourism sub-projects in St. Elizabeth and Manchester under the Rural Economic Development Initiatives component; rehabilitation of five roads and implementation of 21 subprojects under the CIP; and the designing and implementation of 12 social service sub-projects to be derived from community action plans under the CCVP.
The project, which was extended in 2000 and 2007, will run until December 2011.