MONTEGO BAY, St James – South St James Member of Parliament Derrick Kellier has announced that the Community Training for Empowerment Programme (CTEP) will be opening a new campus at the start of the new term, which begins next month, to facilitate a gardening/ technician programme.

“We will be using the Blue Hole Nature Park (in Blue Hole, St James) as a third campus for CTEP to train all those young men, and women too, who want to get involved in that skill (gardening),” Kellier told the Observer West.

CTEP, accredited by HEART Trust/NTA, was conceptualised by Kellier who has been the MP for the South St James constituency since 1989. Since its inception in 2004, nearly 1,000 persons have graduated under the initiative, which involves training in housekeeping, food and beverage, and conversational Spanish.

Under the programme, a portion of Kellier’s Constituency Development Fund (CDF) is used to pay half the cost of the classes during training, which run for six months— held once per week inside the Mount Carey Baptist Church Hall and the Maroon Town community centre —while the students are required to pay the remainder.

Meanwhile, Kellier who is also the minister of labour and social security, told the Observer West following a CTEP graduation ceremony for a cohort of 96 students recently, that graduates from the new curriculum to be introduced next term, will be certified to work on golf courses and hotel properties —among other workplaces—locally and internationally.

” A lot of people believe that gardening is just using some tools in a garden to turn over some earth but it is much more than that. We want to give them the appropriate skills in dealing with gardening as well as lawn preparation. We are trying to broaden the skills that we offer under CTEP”.

Over the years a number of CTEP graduates have found employment at hotels, both locally and internationally.

The programme is coordinated by Claudette Clegg.