HE IS a local and regional authority on energy conservation. He designed and built several energy-saving and solar-heating systems, and was the first recipient of the ENCON Plus Award from the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica for outstanding energy conservation.
Frank Haughton worked hard from his youth and made tremendous sacrifices to reach this high level of professionalism. And having reached there, he has committed himself to uplifting others, particularly young people.
The 2002 Governor-General's Achievement Awardee for St. Ann, Frank Haughton was born in 1947 in Montego Bay, St. James. He was the second of four children for Frank and Daisy Haughton who separated when he was young leading to financial difficulties, his main reason for cutting short his stay at Cornwall College.
"I didn't do well in second form, and although I was not asked to leave, I decided to move on to a school that would cost less (Montego Bay Technical Institute)," he said. "From there, it was on to apprenticeship training."
The mandate of the awards is that recipients must be persons of humble background who rise from poverty to make commendable contributions in their communities. They must not have received another national award and must be involved in community activities.
During Frank Haughton's adolescence he fully involved himself in youth club activities and in 1965 became the Youth Development Agency Boy of the Year, which had him representing Jamaica at the Commonwealth Youth Leaders Conference held in England.
Also, in order to help out his mother who worked as a hotel chambermaid, he joined the Public Works Department (PWD) in Montego Bay as an apprentice machinist. His salary went towards paying the tuition fees for his younger siblings.
Using the part-time day release programme at PWD, he successfully combined his apprenticeship with part-time school. He was then granted a transfer to the PWD's Electrical and Mechanical Services Division in Kingston. This made it possible for him to attend a five-year course at the College of Arts Science and Technology (CAST, now the University of Technology).
He graduated from CAST as a plant engineer, and returned to the PWD as an assistant training officer with responsibility to train and develop apprentices across the island. In 1972 he resigned from the company and returned to Montego Bay to work with a private company as a plant engineer.
It was in 1973 when he moved on to work in the hotel industry as a plant engineer, that he showed his competence by developing an apprenticeship training programme for young men working in that industry. In 1980 he launched out on his own and established Econergy Engineering Services Limited located in Ocho Rios. The firm now employs 25 full-time technicians.
He has been using his successful life story and engineering skills unselfishly to inspire, train and develop young people. At his company he offers in-house training, free of cost, to a number of young men. He was responsible for the development of a welders' training programme to train young people in the parishes of St. Ann and St. Mary, a project sponsored by the Rotary Club of Ocho Rios of which he is a past president. He also gives professional support to the Runaway Bay HEART Academy, the Port Maria Vocational Training Centre and a number of other institutions and organisations.
"I want to encourage adults not to give up on a young person even one who seems to be a failure," he said. "And young people should always believe in themselves that they can make a success of their lives, no matter what adversities come their way."
Mr. Haughton and wife Pauline have two children.
