BUFF BAY, Portland — Prime Minister Andrew Holness has announced plans for a training programme catered towards small-scale local contractors who will then be relied upon to ramp up projects being carried out under the National Social Housing Programme (NSHP). An assessment of aspects of social work being done by the Government, he said, had highlighted the need for increased efficiency in areas including the NSHP.

“The new social outreach programme is now under review. Yesterday I met with the senior staff, senior management of economic growth and job creation and we are looking at all projects, policies and programmes to see how we can improve their efficiency and speed of delivery. We are about converting the benefits of the improved economic performance to real benefits to the people of Jamaica; this is one of those critical programmes that will deliver benefits to the people of Jamaica,” said Holness who is also the minister of economic growth and job creation.

He was speaking Friday afternoon during a ceremony to hand over a house, built under the NSHP, to a family in Portland.

“We have started the process of reviewing the programme to see how it can be more effective and efficient. We are going to see how to expand the budget for the new social housing, expand the budget, and increase the number of beneficiaries for the new social housing programme. We are also going to increase the beneficiaries that we are going to attend to every year,” the prime minister explained.

Holness established the NSHP in 2018 as a component of the HOPE programme. The aim is to provide quality, affordable, and sustainable housing to the country’s poor and disadvantaged population. On Friday the prime minister said a general shortage of contractors was hobbling the project.

“Our initial assessment is [there is a challenge with] the number of contractors. That is a constraint right across the board as we are affected in a serious way, especially this programme. We are going to set up a training programme for small, local contractors to work with them to help them develop their skill, their project management, help them to understand building construction, architectural engineering, and all the relevant skills necessary to put together small projects in a quick and efficient way,” Holness announced.

“We are going to establish a training [system] for small contractors so we can double, triple the output of this project — if we have the qualified small contractors. The set of contractors we have is limited for us to expand [the desired scope of activities],” he added.

On Friday, Calbert Jones and Leroy Grant became the latest recipients of houses through the NSHP. They were elated to get the keys to their new dwellings. Jones lost his house 19 years ago in a fire that claimed the life of his spouse. Forty per cent of her body was burnt and she died five days after the blaze. Leroy Grant lost his house four years ago, also because of a fire.

During the handover ceremony Member of Parliament for Portland Western, Daryl Vaz commended Holness on the work being done through the HOPE project and indicated that, through public-private partnerships, he had assisted constituents with more than 25 houses during his 17 years as an MP.