Kingston, 24 May 2020 – The Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, the Honourable Olivia Grange, has commended Caribbean Cement Company and Jamaica Pre-Mix Limited who have sanitised public spaces around three parks in the corporate area as their Labour Day project.

The companies collaborated on the sanitisation project at Mandela Park, St William Grant Park and Papine Park on Sunday (today).

Minister Grange who took part in the sanitisation activities at Mandela Park said: “Carib Cement and Jamaica Pre-Mix offered to help us sanitise the streets around Mandela Park, St William Grant Park, and the Papine area and I think it’s an excellent move and we really appreciate this offer from these two companies.”

The companies converted the use of their cement trucks by filling them with soap and water to wash down the public spaces, while a crew with push brooms scrubbed the surfaces.

The Communications and Community Outreach Manager at Caribbean Cement Company, Klao Bell-Lewis, said the company felt it had to contribute to the effort to fight the spread of covid-19:

“This year Labour Day is being specially managed because of the crisis so we looked at how we could be most effective and one way of doing that was helping with sanitising public spaces. We reached out to partners and we’re very happy to have had Jamaica Pre-Mix come on board with their trucks and we provided sanitation fluid, a crew and the organisation to get this project done.”

The Managing Director of Jamaica Pre-Mix, John Valentine, was pleased with exercise.

“It shows that fairly large areas of public space can be sanitised quickly and efficiently and I think that it has worked out quite well and it is something that we definitely would like to continue to do over time to try to maintain the public spaces,” said Mr Valentine.

The Mayor of Kingston, His Worship Senator Councillor, Delroy Williams said he was happy to see private entities and major corporations taking an interest in the sanitisation of public spaces.

The Mayor said:
“Municipalities across the country have been grappling with the cleansing of high-trafficked public spaces. Over the years we have become committed to it and it’s good to see that a lot more entities are sharing a similar view that we need to maintain and keep clean these high-trafficked public spaces; and for us it sends the right signal.”

Labour Day is being observed on Monday, May 25 under the theme, Labour At Home: Clean Up, Fix Up, Plant Up!

“Officially Labour Day is the 23rd of May, but because it falls on a Saturday, we will be having the public holiday on Monday,” said Minister Grange. She added that “between Saturday and Monday we have an extended period of celebration, and so we thought it appropriate to do this sanitisation and cleaning of the streets — the areas where the taxis park and so on, today [Sunday].”

On Monday, the Prime Minister, the Most Honourable Andrew Holness will lead the National Project which is the cleaning of the statues of the nation’s founding fathers — The Right Excellent Sir Alexander Bustamante and the Right Excellent Norman Manley — at St William Grant Park in Downtown, Kingston.

Mayors across the country will lead Parish projects.

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