The Government has allocated $350 million to mitigate the impact of the dry period.
Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, Hon. Matthew Samuda, advised that $150 million will be used for trucking of water and will be directed through Members of Parliament.
He was addressing a Special Press Briefing on Wednesday (July 16) at Jamaica House.
“It will see further trucking support to the National Water Commission (NWC) of approximately $50 million to service critical infrastructure and $50 million towards additional tank purchases,” he said.
Mr. Samuda further shared that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining will execute drought mitigation measures for farmers to the tune of $100 million, to be shared among water trucking, drip irrigation systems and grass purchases.
“It is unusual that this sort of intervention takes place at this time of the year and as the [Director of the Meteorological Service of Jamaica], Evan [Thompson] would have said and would have shown in his graphs, we are not getting the rainfall that is in line with our 30-year calculated averages and that, in and of itself, creates a very difficult circumstance for the water sector, whether it be the NWC, the municipal systems or the National Irrigation Commission, because it makes it very difficult to plan,” he explained.
Minister Samuda reasoned that the investments made by the Government in the water sector over the last nine years have improved and made more than 350,000 Jamaicans drought resilient.
He highlighted that Jamaica is currently midway in $22 billion of capital investment in the water sector across potable water, sewerage and irrigation.
This, he said, will benefit more than 900,000 Jamaicans when complete.
“Some of those projects will be complete in three months and others will take as long as five years when one contemplates some of the larger-scale projects that we have. But we want to assure Jamaicans that the investment is already bearing fruit,” Mr. Samuda said.
He added that with the investments being made, the Government expects that several large geographic areas will not experience drought issues in the future.
