Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett says Government will be allocating $500 million towards housing for tourism workers living in “substandard conditions”.

He said, under this new intervention to assist very poor tourism workers, 100 houses will be provided for them this financial year.

“This strategy of reaching to the very poor tourism workers is one that had been tugging at me for a while because I go to see them and I recognise that some leave the palatial settings to [less than ideal settings] and that can’t be right,” Bartlett said during the opening of the 2024/25 Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

He said the money, which has been provided by the Tourism Enhancement Fund (TEF) and matched by the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) and tourism partners, will benefit workers who “have no capacity to be able to build a house for themselves, but they have family who have a piece of land somewhere”.

In addition, he said 3,000 units are going to be provided by the hotel investors for hotel workers.

In the meantime, Bartlett announced that as of April 19, 2024, the Tourism Workers Pension Scheme (TWPS), which was launched in January 2022, now has 9,497 registered tourism workers, saving $1.2 billion.

“When added to the $1 billion that we [Government] put in and the interest that has accrued as a result of good management, we are now $3 billion in the fund,” he said.

Bartlett said this means that is not just a pool of funds for the workers, “but what we have built and are building now, with the potential of 300,000 to 500,000 members, because this is the only pension scheme where it’s not confined to a single skillset or a company, but anyone who contributes more than 30 per cent of his/her labour and effort to tourism is qualified to be a member”.

He said he believes that this comprehensive pension plan has the potential to create a pool of domestic savings that can be converted into investment.

“That’s the essence of growth because now we won’t have to go and borrow from external and then the money leave Jamaica to go pay back. There will be a large enough pool of affordable funds that can build roads, build school, build hospital, and many other things. So the vision is not just a vision that is about the tourism worker per se. It’s a vision of tourism, making a seminal contribution to economic growth and development,” he said.