KINGSTON, Jamaica — The Tourism Enhancement Fund (TEF) will, over the next three years, upgrade 10 beaches across the island as part of its Beach Development Programme, which is aimed at enhancing the facilities at public beaches for greater enjoyment.

They are Watson Taylor Park in Hanover; Success, St James; Priory, St Ann; Rio Nuevo and Murdock Beach, both in St Mary; Winnifred Beach, Portland; Rocky Point, St Thomas; Guts River, Manchester; and Alligator Pond and Crane Road both in St Elizabeth.

Providing details on the project during a recent virtual public town hall meeting on the draft Beach Access and Management Policy for Jamaica, Executive Director, TEF, Dr Carey Wallace, explained that the selection process is undertaken by a multi-agency committee that meets monthly.

“It’s nicely spread over the four quarters of the country to ensure that most communities will have relatively easy access to one of these world-class beaches that we are developing,” he says.

Dr Wallace notes that the beaches that are chosen are determined to be safe, environmentally and economically sustainable, accessible and aesthetically pleasing.

“Any development we make on our natural resources we want to ensure that it continues to place Jamaica in that top echelon of the best in the world anywhere. So, we ensure it’s well planned, all of the factors are considered… to ensure a sustainable success story from the beaches that we develop,” he said.

He pointed out that the essentials for the programme include restaurants, bars and shops; lifeguards; parking; security; proper signage; utilities; WI-FI; entertainment area and a unique feature.

Dr Wallace said that the unique feature will enable persons to identify the beach, no matter where they are located in the world.

“Jamaica has been blessed and has some of the best natural beaches in the world, so we make sure that when we go in, our interference doesn’t spoil the natural beauty that’s there, but it enhances it. [We] put in the basic infrastructure to ensure that it is amenable and comfortable to our Jamaicans, but we ensure that it’s done in a very tasteful way,” he added.

Dr Wallace said the plan is to make these areas self-sustaining, through the provision of concessionaire opportunities, in order to cover operational expenses and to ensure that it is free to the public.

“We ensure that there are revenue centres as part of the development of the beach, because we want to ensure that it is free to the public. It’s unfair to ask someone who has lived in that community, who has been going to that beach all their lives, and all of a sudden we develop and now we are going to charge them,” he argued.

“In order to make it free, but to still earn enough to maintain it — pay the lifeguards, ensure it’s cleaned well, improve it — we have these concessionaire opportunities with the restaurants, the bars and the shops… so that’s our business model in our development,” Dr Wallace said.

The executive director pointed out that community consultation and sensitisation are critical components of the development process.

“In terms of the development process, we are very careful in designing it well, so we start with a tender for design, put out a tender, get a design team in, then we do an internal consultation to ensure that they understand exactly the task that is before them,” he said.

 “We then do a public consultation with the community, and this is before we put pen to paper. We consult the community to ensure that they are involved from the get-go, what they would like to see, what they would not want to see in the design. We then get that preliminary design and then we go back to the community with something on paper to say that based on the topography, the coastal engineering, this is what we are presenting,” he explained.

Following this, he said the community then has an opportunity to tweak the design to produce the final product, which is taken to procurement for the necessary approvals.

“We are very heavy on consultation and design, because when you do it that way it guarantees you that the finished product that you put out there will stand the test of time,” he added.

Dr Wallace pointed out that some of the beaches upgraded under the Beaches Development Programme are Burwood Beach in Trelawny, $28 million; Lyssons, St Thomas, $49.6 million; Boston Beach, Portland, $27.8 million; and Annotto Bay/Marking Stone Beach, St Mary, $38.3 million.