$1.3b earmarked to continue Ja’s emergency communication system upgrade
THE GOVERNMENT has budgeted $1.3 billion to continue initiatives under the ‘Improvement of Emergency Communication System i n Jamaica’ Project, during fiscal year 2024/25.
This engagement aims to develop a national emergency communication system to coordinate incident response among key government agencies and volunteers.
Details of the project are outlined in the 2024/25 Estimates of Expenditure, tabled recently in the House of Representatives by Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Dr Nigel Clarke.
For the upcoming fiscal year, the earmarked provision will be used to complete installation of the remaining 97 base station radios and 222 mobile radios in emergency vehicles islandwide.
The allocation will also fund a system acceptance test and end-user training for ministries, departments and agencies in the use and maintenance of allocated radios.
It will also finance the handover/ commissioning of the Disaster Emergency Communication (DECOM) infrastructure, and the activation of its operation and sustainability plan.
Some of the achievements up to December 2023 include completion of the National Works Agency’s backbone design for disaster emergency communication and re-survey of 30 repeater and siren sites, conducted to determine the structural integrity of the towers.
Additionally, the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) Network Operation Centre has been retrofitted, while 12 repeater sites were rehabilitated.
Two maintenance centres were also constructed and two workshops undertaken for the installation of mobile radios for public emergency vehicles in Kingston and St. James.
Construction work also commenced at 12 of 15 siren towers i n St. Mary and St. Catherine.
Following several extensions, the initiative, which commenced in October 2016, is slated to end in March 2026.
The project’s implementation is being spearheaded by ODPEM, and co-financed by the Government of Jamaica (GOJ) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).