LILLIPUT, St James – Prime Minister Andrew Holness heartily welcomed RCD Hotels group’s announcement that in addition to constructing the 451-room Unico Montego Bay, they will also be building some 1,000 housing units to be sold to hotel workers.

On Friday at a ground breaking for the UNICO Montego Bay in Lilliput, St James, the company said that in the construction phase it will employ some 1,000 workers and subsequently, over 600 new employees to service the hotel rooms upon the completion.

“I want to welcome the RCD group to Jamaica. We’re very happy to have you as a development partner. And we know that it is not just an investment in our sun, sea and sand. You’re also going to be investing in our society,” Holness stated in his keynote address.

“…We are very pleased to hear that you [RCD] come to Jamaica with a social consciousness about housing for those 600 plus tourism workers. It has been the case that we have built out hotel rooms for our visitors, unfortunately, we haven’t built rooms for the workers.

“It has led to a situation where the comfort of the visitors is sometimes far more than the comfort of the people who work in the hotels, and they have to survive and they have to build places for themselves, which may, if not properly organised, if the forward planning isn’t put into place, will detract from the rooms that we build for the visitors and take away from the product,” Holness bemoaned.

“So if we are truly interested in building an excellent product, then we must not only build rooms for visitors, we also have to build rooms for the workers.”

Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett also announced that apart from the housing development, a partnership has also been entered into with RCD to construct a stadium in Lilliput, where the Unico Montego Bay will be located.

The tourism minister disclosed that all future negotiations for hotel developments will include a social development component.

“And so I wanted to say that all subsequent discussions with investors coming into Jamaica for tourism will take into account the impact of the environment, the impact of the social development within the areas and the governance of the area,” Bartlett said.

Vice-president of Development-RCD, Rodrigo Chapur, said he was happy to bring the second Unico to Jamaica.

“Minister Bartlett, you welcome our family and company from day one and we are happy in finally bringing Unico here to Jamaica. It is our second Unico and it’s a great brand,” Chapur said.