June 23, 1973: The enabling Workers Bank law was passed establishing a new commercial bank, the Workers Savings and Loan Bank as a corporate body (with 100 per cent Jamaican ownership and control), and absorbing the assets and liabilities of the Government Savings Bank in operation since 1870.
June 24, 1965: The World Bank announced it would pay up to US$200,000 of the cost of a study for a new four-mile north-south express highway through Kingston. The bank noted that traffic on the existing north-south thoroughfare in Kingston was already heavy and was expected to double by 1969. As the thoroughfare hardly had any spare capacity, traffic was already siphoned off into parallel streets, causing congestion throughout the area. As a result, the centre of Kingston was becoming increasingly cut off from the main suburban areas in the north. The new highway project was part of a plan to relieve the congestion.
June 25, 1973: The House approved new salaries for ministers and parliamentarians. The annual salary of the Prime Minister became $22,000 per annum, the Minister of Finance $16,000, other ministers $14,000, ministers of state $12,000, parliamentary secretaries $11,000, Leader of the Opposition $11,000 and members of parliament $7,500.
June 26, 1963: It was discovered that Clifton Harvey, a squatter on land owned by the Agricultural Development Corporation at Green Pond Beach in western Kingston had reclaimed half-acre of land from the sea by asking trucks taking debris, bricks, stone, and concrete lumps from demolished buildings and walls in Kingston and St. Andrew to the nearby KSAC dump during the past four years, to unload it where he was living. The enterprising developer had also leased lots on the reclaimed land to other squatters.
June 27, 1867: The Secretary of the Trelawny Savings Bank, a private savings institution, was arrested for stealing over £8,000 through a series of forgeries and thefts. He was a church warden, Justice of the Peace, the postmaster at Falmouth and a respected citizen. Earlier this month he began feigning illness, and while on a hike two weeks ago in the hills of Trelawny and Manchester with a group of friends, he mysteriously disappeared. Investigations revealed the illness he had been feigning was a prelude to giving the impression that he had become overcome while on the hike and had died in the forests in order to camouflage his departure from Jamaica by ship.
Compiled by Hartley Neita
Taken from the Financial Gleaner
