MID TOWN $22M SANITATION AGREEMENT SIGNED

MID TOWN $22M SANITATION AGREEMENT SIGNED

Prime Minister Bruce Golding on December 3 signed a $22 million agreement to improve sanitation in the Mid Town area of West Kingston that will impact scores of people in a densely populated quarter of the city.

Mr. Golding welcomed the joint effort that was brokered by the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) with the European Union, the Tivoli Gardens Development Council and the Rotary Club of Downtown Kingston. The funding will provide for the building of 18 sanitary facilities that will improve general public health in the community. 

"We have another urgent problem that has to be addressed. It has stemmed from the fact that many of the houses that used to be occupied by a single family 60 years ago; that premises is now occupied by six families or five families. We have some single-street addresses with 16, 20 families living. I have been there, I have seen them. Because of this uncomfortable density, sanitation is one of the things that has suffered because within those premises is not enough facilities for sewage disposal and we have to dispose of sewage whatever way we can and the way that many of our residents have to dispose this sewage which is neither healthy for them nor for the community. .....What we are seeking to do, and what this project is designed to do, is to provide modern hygienic sanitary facilities for those families in those premises who right now don't have any proper means of sewage disposal, don't have proper means of taking care of their everyday hygienic requirements."

The project will be financed by the European Union's General Import Programme with a $20 million grant from the European Union and $2.2 million from the community through labour, project co-ordination and land.

Executive Director of the JSIF, Scarlette Gillings, said that Rotary Club of Downtown Kingston was providing the legal vehicle through which the project could be executed. The club has been a partner with JSIF on a previous successful community project.

President of the Rotary Club, David Shields noted that the club targeted public health as an area for involvement and they were looking forward to a successful project.

Mid Town, one of the older communities in Kingston, is the quarter of West Kingston bordered by Spanish Town Road, Rose Lane, North Street and Milk Lane.