FALMOUTH, Trelawny — PRESIDENT and chief executive officer of the Port Authority of Jamaica (PAJ), Noel Hylton says construction at the newly developed US$222-million Falmouth Cruise Port should be completed by June.

Two cruise ship berths at the port have been completed.

“I believe by June we will be out of here… all the construction will be completed but the berths are fully completed,” Hylton told members of the media earlier this week.

JES Olsen, project manager for the contractors, Danish firm Pihl, developers of the port, explained that the project is 90 per cent complete.

He said there was outstanding work to be done on the transformer station, landscaping and paving of some areas of the port, the completion of construction of the building to house the immigration terminals among other work.

“It is 90 per cent completed. The port itself is completed but we need the final transformer station. It will be completed April. Then we have the building of a booster station and there is a sewage plant that

has to be completed,” Olsen declared.

He also noted that the paving of Water Square, the town’s centre is also scheduled to be completed soon.

“We have some more work on the opposite side of the Square and some paving of Water Square. But Water Square was additional work which we had a very short time to do,” Olsen told the

Observer West.

Speaking on Tuesday at the official opening of the Falmouth shipping pier and the inaugural visit of the world’s largest cruise ship, Oasis of the Seas to the island, Prime Minister Bruce Golding congratulated the workers for doing “a marvellous job” in the development of the pier. He, however, noted that “there are some serious challenges that we have to undertake”.

As part of plans to address the challenges, Golding disclosed he has mandated members of the Jamaica Defence Force to resume construction of the over $300-million police station here next month. He said the work will continue until the project is completed.

The prime minister who is also the minister of defence explained that the building of the police station will be undertaken by the engineering corps of the JDF.

“The JDF engineering corps will be on sight to resume work on that project in April next month to see to it that that project is completed,” Golding announced. Construction of the state-ofthe-art facility got underway about six years ago but work came to a halt shortly after, due mainly to contractual issues.

The building of the facility on lands at Rodney Street, near the present run-down station, never got off the ground until about three years after former national security minister K D Knight broke ground for the project. Apart from the resumption of construction of the police station, the prime minister pointed to the need for investment in the upgrade of the town’s sewerage system. He explained that the significant level of investment that Falmouth is expected to attract has precipitated that need for such a project.

“There are people who are going to want to go to Falmouth. They are going to take Vision 2013 and decide that is not Jamaica but Falmouth is going to be the place to live, work, raise your family and do business. And we know that sewage is going to be a major issue that we are going to have to invest significant sums to ensure that we have the capacity,” Golding argued.