Byron McDaniel, Gleaner Writer
WALDERSTON, Manchester:
SEVERAL AGRICULTURAL projects that were destroyed by Hurricane Ivan at the St. John Bosco Boys Home in Hatfield, Manchester, have been rehabilitated and upgraded at a cost of US$50,000 ($3.2 million) by the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) Jamaica Business Recovery Programme (JBRP).
A newly-refurbished skills training centre used for greenhouse horticulture production, poultry facility and a biogas production machine were officially returned to Susan Fraser, director of the St. John Bosco Boys Home last Wednesday.
The home is operated by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy and currently accomodates 150 boys from three years old to 16 years old. Some 40 per cent of the total income generated by the home is earned through farming, catering, dish rental and a butcher trade training programme.
EXTENSION OFFICER
Samuel Harris, the deputy parish manager of the Rural Agricultural Development Authority's (RADA) Manchester office, who was on hand to witness the return of the facilities and equipment, said he has assigned an extension officer to provide the necessary technical assistance to the St. John Bosco Boys Home programme.
The JBRP representatives and guests were carried on a tour of the greenhouse which had an abundance of healthy growing tomatoes, the poultry houses, which were stocked with chickens, and the modern biogas equipment which produces methane gas from pig waste for fuel.
