PRIME Minister Portia Simpson Miller promises over 21,000 jobs in 2014/15...... Simpson Miller explained the job numbers as follows: JEEP to employ 12,000; over 5,000 to be employed on the Agro Parks projects; 2,000 direct and indirect jobs.....

BY BALFORD HENRY Senior staff reporter balfordh@jamaicaobserver.com  Wednesday, April 30, 2014   

PRIME Minister Portia Simpson Miller said yesterday that her Government will create some 21,000 jobs during 2014/15.

Portia Simpson-Miller

The prime minister, who was speaking in the Budget Debate in the House of Representatives, explained that close to 80 per cent of the jobs will be created under the Government's minimum wage emergency works scheme, the Jamaica Emergency Employment Programme (JEEP), and its rural food production-boosting agro parks development programme.

Simpson Miller explained the job numbers as follows: JEEP to employ 12,000; over 5,000 to be employed on the Agro Parks projects; 2,000 direct and indirect jobs generated by the scrap metal trade; and 2,000 more spaces for Jamaicans on the overseas employment programmes in the United States and Canada.

However, the employment figures given by the prime minister are likely to raise some questions, as they did not add up to new jobs.

The Government had originally stated that some US$5 million (J$5 billion) of the US$353 million (J$35.3 billion) which will be spent on the three-year Major Investment Development Programme would be allocated to JEEP this financial year. Minister of transport, works and housing Dr Omar Davies told the contract-signing ceremony at the Jamaica Conference Centre in Kingston on March 18 that the first round of the new phase of JEEP, under a project involving the 63 members of parliament (MPs) each being allocated $10 million, or a total of $630 million, which began in March, would employ a total of 12,000 people. more