At a town hall meeting at the Montego Bay Civic Centre yesterday, Prime Minister Bruce Golding stated that the debate in Parliament on the casino gambling legislation will begin next month.

“We spent a long time working on the draft, probably longer than we had hoped, but on Tuesday, Audley Shaw, the finance minister gave notice of tabling the Gaming Bill, and it will be debated in July and then passed into law,” he said.

Prime Minister Golding made the statement in response to a concern raised by mayor of Montego Bay, Charles Sinclair, about the delay in opening up the tourism industry to casino gaming. He also stated that the delay in drafting the casino gambling framework that will govern their operations was a deliberate move by Government, as it wanted to ensure that the country would maximize the benefits that are to be derived from such ventures.

“We spent a lot of time preparing the draft, because we wanted to ensure that every sentence was right: every ‘t’ crossed and every ‘i’ dotted,” he said.