Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller yesterday promised a temporary, special employment programme to clean up major urban areas and rural towns in preparation for next year’s Cricket World Cup 2007 at a cost of $635.8 million.

She said that the programme, which is set to begin next month, is also aimed at unemployment relief and poverty alleviation by creating 12,000 temporary jobs for the next six months, but could be extended after an initial review.

The prime minister said that she expects to be criticised for the announcement that it is an election ploy, and called on the “comrades” to defend her against the criticisms.

“I don’t call any election yet. It is not about election it is about putting poor people to work. When they come to attack me, I am expecting to hear from you,” she said.

She described the project as a “special six-month, clean-up and beautification programme” covering the entire island, not to be confused with current programmes like Lift-Up Jamaica, and will be financed out of the savings from the Venezuelan PetroCaribe oil facility.

Speaking to thousands of supporters attending yesterday’s 68th annual conference of the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) at the National Arena, Simpson Miller said that work will be done in major towns, urban centres and other communities.

“We do not only talk about the poor, we are doing something about it,” she said. “Omar (Davies, the finance minister) is trying to balance the books and, at the same time, we are trying to balance people’s lives.”

Simpson Miller said that to ensure that there is value for money in the programme, as well as sustainability, it will take a multi-agency approach, as well as include public and private sector involvement.

“We are going to clean up a number of areas, including our verges and our median strips,” she said. “We are going to do landscaping and we are going to remove all the old garbage and the old things from inside homes, from off the streets and from our communities.”

The prime minister said that the programme was not aimed at giving people a “blye” (chance), but would involve meaningful work and would be reviewed at the end of six months to see if it should be continued.

She also informed the crowd that the current Lift-Up Jamaica programme already employed just over 9,000 persons at the end of August.

The Lift-Up Jamaica programme is another work programme introduced in August 2005 by former Prime Minister P J Patterson. It involves the spending of $2 billion from a similar Venezuelan oil facility, the Caracas Energy Agreement Fund, which preceded PetroCaribe, and under which Patterson’s administration had planned to spend a total of $4 billion on various initiatives to counter social decay in inner-city communities while providing employment, especially for women.

Yesterday, Simpson Miller sought to justify her decision to divert $1 billion from the National Insurance Fund into small business loans, when she announced that the fund had already been over-subscribed with applications for over $1.8 billion in loans received.

She said that, beginning in October, she will start handing out a total of 4,000 land titles which are scheduled to be distributed in 2006/2007.