Jamaica fund criticised Jamaica fund criticised

(Jamaica Observer) Head of the delegation of the European Commission to Jamaica, Ambassador Marco Mazzocchi-Alemanni, Wednesday criticised the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) for the long time it is taking to implement a $1.3 billion poverty reduction programme, funded by the EU.

The programme is aimed at improving social conditions in 40 volatile communities across the island and was set to begin in December 2007 and be completed at the end of next year.

But to date only two communities have been identified for improvement and Mazzochi-Alemanni is not pleased.

“It is no secret that I consider that JSIF has been slow in implementing this programme,” he told the Observer minutes after a press briefing that discussed a two-day seminar in the fight against organised crime at the Terra Nova Hotel in St Andrew.

However, Mazzochi-Alemanni was hopeful that JSIF officials would “pull up their socks and get cracking”, since the money granted by the EU would go back into their coffers if the projects were not completed in the specified time.

“They have programmes in the pipeline for almost J$400 million that I think we shall see the implementation of; most of these are construction of schools, community centres and homes for the elderly,” he said.

Wednesday, JSIF’s general manager for technical services, Omar Sweeney, admitted that the work on the projects were behind schedule.

“The projects are running a little bit slower than expected but we believe that it’s worth the time that we are taking because what we have to do is to identify the volatile areas that we are going to target. We want to make sure that once we go into these communities we see some real impact in terms of the reduction of crime and violence,” Sweeney said.