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Create More Jobs in the Utilities and
Infrastructure Sector
We will use economic clusters to encourage synergies, cost
savings and heightened efficiencies in the search for new jobs
and new economic approaches.
One such unit will be formed from what is now a triad of problem
entities, with missed targets and rampant poor performances:
the water, energy and housing sectors. Early in the new term,
we intend to convert these three into an interconnected growth
triangle which will improve service delivery and create thousands
of new jobs.
There is a very strong and practical basis for
anticipating real employment growth in these
sectors. In the case of water catchment and
storage, for example, our plans for promoting
water harvesting mean that people will be
employed to install the gutters on roofs and
prepare catchment tanks. This is just one
of many examples where entry- and
secondary-level jobs would be created.
Reducing the Debt
Burden on Students
We will find and secure new
funding arrangements to
make the very burdensome
student loans much more
manageable, for responsible
student-borrowers, over a longer
period of time.
The JLP government will seek
grant funding and financing from non-
government guarantee bonds issued by
special purpose institutions which will be
created to facilitate lower cost and longer-term
student loans to help financially stretched young
Jamaicans to finance their education. These bonds which
will be tradeable, will be made attractive to long term investors.
A Boost for Low Income Earners
We will raise the minimum wage from $6,200 to $8,200 per week.
We will remove PAYE taxes for those workers earning a basic
salary of $1.5 million or less.
Focus on Small and Medium Enterprises
We believe in small and medium businesses as engines of growth.
Apart from our return of incentives to the Junior Stock Market,
we will seek to both empower and remove the blockers for small
businesses by:
• Capacity Building: facilitating access to
entrepreneurship courses, management skills and
basic accounting
• Clearing bureaucracy: establishing a Division within
the Ministry of Growth & Job Creation specifically
focussed on the needs of small business
• Access to Credit: once again expanding lending
through the DBJ
Online Information and Automation
of Government Services
The Ministry responsible for ICT will be mandated
to ensure greater openness in government
by making more information available
online. In parallel, government
will also have more records and
business processes digitized,
for
greater
administrative
efficiency, and as a home-
grown way to employ young
persons trained (data entry,
records management) through
the
National
Apprenticeship
Programme.
Developing Domestic
Business
The Ministry of Economic Growth and Job
Creation will seek to ensure that spending is
viewed through the sharp lenses of facilitating and
encouraging business transactions with local business houses.
The clear objective will be to facilitate and foster local economic
growth and job creation.
The apprenticeship program to train young people and help more
mature employees transition into new jobs with upgraded skills,
and which is a central plank of this manifesto, will provide trained
and work-ready Jamaicans to help local businesses grow.
We will make Jamaica the Caribbean region’s leading producer of
technology through the creation of a Technology Innovation Fund
for support of technology based projects and startup companies.