WESTERN BUREAU – The Hanover Chamber of Commerce will meet with stakeholders in the cruise-shipping industry over the next couple of months, in an effort to maximise its earnings should the proposed cruise-shipping industry for Lucea become a reality.

“What we want to do is to make sure that we know how the business of cruise-shipping works so that people in the area can benefit from it,” Chamber president Ryan Morrison told the Observer on Thursday.

Last week, Transport and Works Minister Robert Pickersgill announced in Parliament that the Port Authority of Jamaica plans to build a cruise ship facility in Lucea.

“The technical studies for the project have been completed and we are about to move on to the next stage of having drawings done,” Pickersgill said then.

Work on the project, he added, should begin by next April.

Morrison said Thursday that his organisation would be having dialogue with cruise ship owners, the Port Authority of Jamaica, entrepreneurs, political representatives and other interests to ensure that the entire parish would benefit from the move.

“We are hoping that the entire community will get an opportunity to benefit from the proposed development of the cruise ship facility in Lucea, and not just a few people…” the Chamber president said.

The issue of a cruise-shipping industry in Lucea has been on the table for more than five years. In 2001, then Minister of Transport and Works Peter Phillips announced at a joint meeting of the Hanover Chamber of Commerce and the Hanover Parish Council that he had given instructions for a feasibility study to be carried out at the Lucea Harbour. That study, the minister had said then, would determine whether the venture was viable.

In recent weeks, the Port Authority has been accepting proposals from engineering firms who want to design and supervise the construction of the Lucea Terminal, which is located east of the town’s harbour. The project, the Port Authority said, consists primarily of finger piers that will be able to accommodate the simultaneous berthing of two cruise ships; and a terminal building with a capacity to facilitate the unimpeded flow of about 2,000 persons within a two-hour period.

Several local business interests have long argued that the Lucea Harbour, which was once a shipping port, was capable of accommodating a viable cruise-shipping industry in that coastal town. Some have consistently argued, too, that a viable cruise-shipping industry could help to stimulate economic growth in Hanover as a whole. Morrison noted Thursday that his organisation welcomed government’s decision to construct the facility, even as he warned that it would not benefit everyone if it were not done in an organised way.