Old Harbour fisherfolk get new village
Published:Saturday | January 29, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Rasbert Turner, Gleaner Writer
OLD HARBOUR, St Catherine:
ANTHONY HENRY smiled brightly then shouted "Lawd, mi really like di new place! It really look good!" as he sells fish at the newly renovated Old Harbour Bay Fishing Village. The facility was handed over by the St Catherine Parish Council last Thursday during a brief ceremony on the beach.
The project was completed a cost of more than $25 million and was funded by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Canadian International Development Agency and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture.
"The place look much nicer now and what we need is conformity to have it working for the benefit of those who use the beach," Henley Banton, vice-president of Old Harbour Bay Fisher Council, said.
Meanwhile, secretary/manager of St Catherine Parish Council, Christopher Powell, said the council wanted to ensure that the users of the facility have a clean and healthy environment.
His views were endorsed by persons doing business on the beach.
"We are very pleased that we can be here and see a place that is looking good. I am now encouraged to shop here, " Michelle Bell said.
The facility forms part of the agriculture ministry's fishing beach rehabilitation project.
It consists of the erection of new sanitary conveniences, stalls, fish net sheds and a general market building for vendors.
Other fishing villages that form part of the project are the Calabash Bay and Black River fishing beaches in St Elizabeth, Rocky Point Fishing Beach in Clarendon, and Negril and Savanna-la-Mar fishing beaches in Westmoreland.
The new facility at Old Harbour Bay Fishing Beach replaced a number of dilapidated shacks that dotted the nation's largest fishing beach.