With almost $2 billion already spent to eradicate the screw worm from Jamaica, the Government has allocated a further $280 million for the 2007/08 fiscal year to tackle the deadly pest which attacks warm blooded animals, including humans.

This was outlined in the supplementary estimates of expenditure in Parliament last week. The money will be used to produce, process and distribute some 24 million sterile flies every week to kill the screw worm fly. The project, which is funded in part by the Government and the International Atomic Funding Agency, will also step up the public awareness campaign through the electronic and print media, field activities and distribute insecticides islandwide.

The screw worm eradication programme was originally designed to be a three-year project (1998-2001) estimated at the time to cost some $324 million. But nearly 10 years and $1.5 billion later, the infection rate of the pest is estimated to be at pre-1998 levels.

With the allocation this fiscal year,it would bring the cost of the project to $1.78 billion.

President of the Jamaica Veterinary Medicine Association, Dr. Graham Brown, has blamed the failure of the programme on poor management. He suggested last week that a full-time manager be employed to manage the project.

Sterile flies

But head of the Veterinary Division in the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, Dr. Headly Edwards, in interview last week, said a more efficient strain of sterile flies would be released across the island this time. He said there would also be technical support from Mexico in tackling the screw worm.

Senator Anthony Johnson, Opposition Spokesman on Agriculture, yesterday urged the ministry to continue with the screw worm eradication programme. "I would think that if we were to do that (discontinue the programme), We would have lost the opportunity or the momentum to fight the screw worm," he said at the ceremony to declare April Farmers' Month.