Government sectoral round-up covers greenhouse build-out, conch levy flexibility, hospitals, menstrual-health pilot, and Workers Week

The Government intends to spend eight hundred million Jamaican dollars on ninety-five new greenhouses in more than one parish before 2026 closes, as part of wider work to shore up farming against climate shocks. Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining Floyd Green set out the figures on Wednesday during his sectoral debate presentation in Parliament.

According to his breakdown, forty structures are earmarked for Mocha in Clarendon, ten for Lancaster in southern Manchester, twenty for Water Valley in St Ann, ten for Damad in St Catherine, and fifteen for Blackstone Edge in St Ann. For Manchester, Green said the parish is turning a greenhouse cluster into a protected agricultural zone that will also gain storage and a new farm access road.

Alongside that capital line, more than one and a half billion dollars over five years from the Green Climate Fund’s Adapt Jamaica programme will support a climate-resilient greenhouse drive islandwide. Green said a centrepiece is engineering houses that can ride out a Category 5 hurricane, telling members he wants “a greenhouse that is fit for purpose for our reality.”

He also announced a one hundred and forty-five million dollar programme of small water catchment ponds aimed at high-output, drought-prone parishes, meant to widen farm water supply, lift production, and add resilience. He said the National Irrigation Commission will add two water trucks for communities that trucks must reach, while older communal catchment tanks will be repaired and folded into agricultural use. Plastic and grass mulch, drip irrigation kits, and storage tanks form another prong, and Green said his ministry has already begun delivering the mix.

On Tuesday the House of Representatives approved the Conch Export Levy (Amendment) Act 2026, which Green piloted, widening ministerial discretion over how conch export levies are structured and timed. The law shifts from a single pathway that effectively required payment before shipment toward alternative schedules the minister may prescribe. Green argued the old rule that payment is due “before you ship, which literally means before you collect” has strained exporters amid recent industry and weather shocks. The 2026 text lets the minister, by order needing parliamentary approval, set how long exporters have to pay, whether sums are lump-sum or by instalments, and, in stated cases, waive, cut, or remit the levy, including extensions of up to twelve months after an export health certificate and export licence issue for a conch consignment. Any such change must be justified on recommendations from the National Fisheries Authority and the board of the Fisheries Management and Development Fund after weighing trade conditions, economic viability, and long-term sustainability, not relief alone. The bill also enlarges that fund’s management board to nine people—six ex officio members and three industry representatives.

Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton, speaking Tuesday, said the Cornwall Regional Hospital and the Western Child and Adolescent Hospital are both slated to open within this financial year, while the rebuilt Spanish Town Hospital should follow around the middle of the next financial year. He said upgraded St Jago, Old Harbour, and Greater Portmore health centres are due to take patients this calendar year, each with laboratory, pharmacy, and diagnostic capacity beyond a standard clinic, part of what he termed a broad refresh of public health infrastructure.

Tufton further outlined a national menstrual health equity pilot targeting eight schools and about two thousand girls, backed by fifty million dollars and delivered with the Ministry of Education plus civic and multilateral partners including UNICEF and the Herflow Foundation. Citing classroom fallout from scarce products and facilities, he noted survey-type figures that one in four girls from low-income communities may miss school during menstruation and that only about thirty per cent of public schools currently provide free supplies, tying absenteeism to weaker grades and wider gaps. The pilot, selecting sites partly by PATH enrolment, is meant to seed a national policy and will bundle water, sanitation, and hygiene upgrades, HPV vaccination, hygiene education, and HIV and sexually transmitted infection prevention. He called period poverty “a systemic barrier that keeps girls out of classroom,” beyond a narrow hygiene worry.

Workers Week 2026 will run Sunday 17 May through Monday 25 May on the theme “Voices heard, shaping labor policies in an evolving labor market.” Jillian Corodus, chief technical director in the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, told JIS News the schedule keeps workers at the heart of policy design. Events include a joint National Workers Week and Labour Day thanksgiving service on 17 May; an Industrial Disputes Tribunal symposium at the UWI Regional Headquarters in St Andrew on 20 May titled “Promoting justice, fairness, and workplace harmony”; a wreath-laying at the Alexander Bustamante monument on the Kingston waterfront and a labour roadshow in St Ann on 21 May under “rebuilding a resilient and productive Jamaica”; a fifth Frome reflections gathering on 22 May at Workers Park in Frome, Westmoreland, a site tied to the 1938 labour riots; islandwide visits to centenarians on 23–24 May; and Labour Day projects on 25 May stressing sport and community development under “one people, one purpose in all things Jamaica wins.” The Ministry of Labor and Social Security leads Workers Week programming, while the National Labour Day Secretariat in the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport coordinates Labour Day itself.