Greenwich Town Fishing Village gets facelift
Published:Wednesday | December 22, 2021 | 12:08 AMChristopher Serju/Senior Gleaner Writer
It is beginning to look a lot more like Christmas at the Greenwich Town Fishing Village in downtown Kingston than it did last year.
Park tables and benches have been installed and a gazebo is under construction within the small green space, which has been demarcated by a perimeter fence, on the right side, as one enters the beach.
During a visit by The Gleaner on Monday, Winston Monroe explained that this was just the latest in a number of infrastructural upgrades by the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), which has been partnering with the village, as well as the greater Greenwich community, since 2014.
He anticipates that the facility will be fully utilised by fisherfolk and residents of Greenwich Farm, some of whom have been involved in the construction, planting of flowers and other jobs to help in the beautification and maintenance of their new-found green area.
Managing Director of JSIF, Omar Sweeney, told The Gleaner that its involvement with the Greenwich community and the fishing village started under the World Bank-funded Integrated Community Development Project seven years ago and continued in 2019 when the Government took the decision to extend it in communities, to complement the social intervention aspects of the zones of special operations (ZOSOs).
By the time JSIF got around to Greenwich Farm, most of the major infrastructural projects had already been completed and so it chose to focus on small-scale infrastructure projects, such as the improvement of pedestrian walkways, zinc fence removal, as well as establishing or rehabilitating parks and other green spaces.
more than just cosmetic improvements
However, Sweeney explained that this two-part strategy has been conceptualised to achieve more than just cosmetic improvements in the communities.
“The first part of the strategy is that by removing waste from the community and keeping it properly containerised you remove opportunities for persons to hide weapons, drugs and other illicit stuff. The idea is to create safer communities, and so the plan is to remove opportunities where threats can lay, and so we use a principle called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED). JSIF is not there as part of the security forces, we are there to provide community building and strengthening of the community, for it to be safe.
“One of the principles of CPTED is that you have to keep the area clear on a recurrent basis, not just clean it up today and forget about it tomorrow. That is the reason why we have environmental wardens, so people from the community employed on a cycled basis – two weeks on and two weeks off. In addition to cleaning the community they also educate residents about how the community is to be kept clean, where the garbage receptacles are and where the trash can be picked up.”
Sweeney went on to explain that in addition to removing waste from the community, JSIF creates better environmental conditions, and it is also important to invest in these small unoccupied spaces to prevent them from being taken over by squatters or used as unsightly dumps, as often happens, when they are left unattended, as is usually found in urban communities.
“Converting them into green spaces is a practical, enlightening and beautiful way to reduce the risk of these things happening,” the JSIF managing director said.