WESTERN BUREAU: HILMA TATE, disaster preparedness coordinator at the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) in Westmoreland, says that additional spaces will be needed to effectively operate emergency shelters while...
WESTERN BUREAU: THE DECISION by Savanna-la-Mar Mayor Bertel Moore to take charge of the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation’s (WMC) new multimillion dollar headquarters effective June 1 has been hailed as a positive move by the business community...
WESTERN BUREAU: Fifteen-year-old Anchovy High School student Kaylia Pinnock is in desperate need of help to get medical attention for a grade two brain tumour, which has left her facing an uncertain future and plunging her mother, Velma Latchman,...
WESTERN BUREAU: DESPITE DECLARING itself as being in an advanced state of readiness as it relates to handling both COVID-19 and the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, the St Elizabeth Municipal Corporation says it will need additional funding to be...
WESTERN BUREAU: With the 2020 hurricane season looming on the horizon and most of the nation’s healthcare workers absorbed in the fight to stem the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, stakeholders in the healthcare sector want the Government to make...
WESTERN BUREAU: The Global Services Association of Jamaica (GSAJ) has submitted a request to the Government for an extension to its current work-at-home arrangement to the end of the year. The current order made by Prime Minister Andrew Holness,...
WESTERN BUREAU: Andrea Campbell, portfolio director of the health promotion and prevention unit at the National Family Planning Board, says the islandwide nightly curfews and stay-at-home orders implemented under COVID-19 could produce an alarming...
WESTERN BUREAU: Jamaica’s emergency-response systems could buckle under the strain of an approaching hurricane season in the midst of coronavirus community spread, Dr Morais Guy, the opposition spokesman on health, has warned. Sixteen named storms...
WESTERN BUREAU: Unlike some of their global counterparts, Sherie-Ann Anderson, head of the Homesharing Association of Jamaica (HAJ), says local Airbnb and other homesharing accommodations hosts will not be affected by Airbnb’s decision to lay off...
Local real estate players say it could take years for the sector to recover from the economic fallout brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. While local estimates were unavailable, the international real estate market is projecting a decline from US$...
WESTERN BUREAU: A travel ban on incoming passengers triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a thunderous blow to Airbnb home-sharing investors locally, real-estate tycoon Angella Whitter has said. The international real estate agency market...
Western Bureau: ECONOMIST DR Andre Haughton has called on the country’s telecommunications companies and the banking sector to create and facilitate the use of mobile wallets so that Jamaicans can send and receive money remotely through the use...
Western Bureau: JAMAICA HOTEL and Tourist Association (JHTA) executive Wayne Cummings said the Government should revisit and broaden its COVID-19 stimulus care package to include tourism workers with salaries above the $1.5-million income tax...
WESTERN BUREAU: Economist and senator Dr André Haughton says the Government’s COVID-19 care packages will not be sufficient to address the fallout from the pandemic, should the spread of the deadly virus continue throughout the summer into the end...
WESTERN BUREAU: Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) executive Wayne Cummings is calling for a date to be set for the reopening of the country’s tourism sector, as he believes that, by doing so, it will create the path leading to the...
Western Bureau: WITH THEIR services increasingly in demand as a result of the COVOD-19 pandemic, public health inspectors assigned to the South East Regional Health Authority (SERHA) are reportedly restive over the Government’s non-payment of...
WESTERN BUREAU: Former education minister, the Reverend Ronald Thwaites, has thrown his support behind a suggestion by Lynton Weir, the principal of Old Harbour High School in St Catherine, to declare the summer holidays now and resume the next...
WESTERN BUREAU: Michael Paquin of Montreal, Canada, is among several tourists from the United States who have been left stranded in Jamaica after their flights were cancelled following the closure of its borders to incoming passengers because of...
WESTERN BUREAU: Children’s Advocate Diahann Gordon Harrison says that unless normality is restored to the education sector and the local economy in short order, COVID-19 could cause an increase in the neglect and abuse of children as a result of...
WESTERN BUREAU: As the closure of schools rolls into its fourth week, administrators at two early childhood education institutions in western Jamaica are trying hard to keep students engaged while out of the classrooms. Schools were ordered closed...
WESTERN BUREAU: Defence attorneys in western Jamaica have expressed disappointment at not being exempted from the nightly COVID-19 curfew order declared by Prime Minister Andrew Holness on Tuesday. The curfews, which commenced last night and which...
WESTERN BUREAU: Steve Morris, chief public health inspector for Westmoreland, says residents have expressed fear that the COVID-19 pandemic could severely impact their communities as persons who have recently returned to the island are not obeying...
WESTERN BUREAU: Half of the 100 COVID-19 isolation rooms needed by the Western Regional Health Authority have been identified in Montego Bay, Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton has said. The Government is seeking to rent, in the...
WESTERN BUREAU: The stigma that hoteliers may face from their properties housing COVID-19 isolation patients will be short-lived, Godfrey Dyer, chairman of the Tourism Enhancement Fund, has said. “Yes, it [the housing of recovering COVID-19...
WESTERN BUREAU: SHERIE-ANN ANDERSON, president of Jamaica Homesharing Association, whose members are listed on the Airbnb accommodation platform, has responded positively to an appeal from the Government for the private sector to help in the...
