(Jamaica Observer) Seven years after Government spent more than J$143 million to acquire the Goodyear factory in St Thomas with the stated intention of opening a call centre, the run-down facility lies idle, providing shelter for goats.
This, as residents bemoan the lack of employment opportunities in this Eastern parish which has suffered a major hit from closures in the banana and sugar cane industries.
Many, especially the youth, had harboured hope that the plans to convert a section of the Goodyear tyre factory, which closed in 1997, to a call centre would have injected new life and job growth into the parish.
In 2005, then Minister of Commerce, Science and Technology Phillip Paulwell had announced that the call centre would be established, following the refurbishing of the building. Paulwell, who now has responsibility for science, telecommunications, energy and mining, told the Jamaica Observer North East last week that the facility is now owned by the Factories Corporation of Jamaica and falls under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
He explained that the call centre plan has been long shelved. He said that at the time of the announcement, talks has been ongoing with investors out of India to relocate a number of their call centres to Jamaica, but that they later decided against it.
“The people we were in touch with later lost interest and then the elections intervened and that was the end of that,” he said.
There are, however, other things afoot, Paulwell indicated.
“I gather there is some interest being shown to do some other things with the facility,” he said.
Residents, meanwhile, feel they are being shafted.
Jermaine Francis of Chesick said had the call centre got off the ground, it would have been a major answer to the unemployment in the parish, especially for young persons like himself.
“Is like wi on the back burner because nutten nah turn since dem come and have big opening fi di Tech Village and say they would educate wi to work in the information centre and train wi to do certain skills, we no hear nutten more,” he bemoaned.
Gladstone Sharmah, a resident of Shady Spring in White Horses, said since the closure of the Goodyear factory, the employment options are now limited to the Seprod factory, supermarkets, hardware stores in Yallahs and Morant Bay, as well as the quarries and utility companies.
Some have had to seek work in neighbouring Kingston, but that presents its own challenges, residents said, as their earnings are not being spent in the parish to drive its economic growth.
“Paulwell set up information technology centre and it is just lying there as a home for goats,” said Sharmah.
“A lot of people gone into taxi work because there are just no jobs,” bemoaned Sharmah, himself a taxi operator.
But even so, he added, business is so slow that he and many of his colleagues are forced to work only during peak hours.
“We can’t run the car up and down with one passenger because we can’t afford the gas so we just have to park,” he said, adding that he has since had to venture into pig rearing to supplement the meagre income.
Like many residents who spoke with the Jamaica Observer North East, Sharmah said St Thomas is in desperate need of employment opportunities and believes tourism could be the answer.
“I think the tourism sector would do well over here because there is Bath Fountain where a lot of persons come during the holidays,” he said.
Visitors, he said, have travelled from as far as South Africa to visit the fountain whose waters are said to have healing properties.
He believes also that the Roselle waterfall could be a tourist attraction as many persons stop by on a daily basis to enjoy the spring water.
“It is the perfect place as you have the waterfall on one side and the beach on the other, so persons can have a choice,” he said.
Before it closed in 2008, the Eastern Banana Estate in Golden Grove was the largest employer in St Thomas. Since then, sugar cane farming, though scaled down, is what continues to put food on many tables. But residents say banana was the preferred crop as it provided year-round employment.
“We want banana back because it is a constant job because now that cane crop out, nuff man idle on the street and is another six months before them back on the job,” said Francis.
The residents have lost hope that the banana industry will ever be resuscitated, arguing that it would cost millions to get things back the way they used to be.
Food For The Poor, in collaboration with the European Union Banana Support Programme, last week launched the Economic Diversification Programme For Banana Producing Parishes, which seeks to provide alternative income-generating opportunities for small farmers who previously cultivated bananas. The 16-month-long programme will provide 40 farmers in Somerset, St Thomas and Esher in St Mary with the materials, training and technical support necessary to engage in sustainable production of Scotch bonnet peppers, goats and bees/honey.
In addition to that, residents said they were told several years ago that Government was in negotiation with one of the largest sugar cane farmers in St Thomas to allocate some 500 acres of land to farmers who have worked in the banana industry over the years.
The EU programme aside, however, residents believe that increased employment in the parish must begin with infrastructural development.
“The roads are in a terrible state from Morant Bay to the border of Portland and nobody will want to come over here and invest under these conditions,” Sidney Gollab Jr lamented.
Gollab said many of the prime hotels in the parish such as the Golden Shore and Whispering Bamboo are underutilised as very few tourists visit the parish.
“St Thomas is the only parish wi nuh see nuh tourist because even in the town, Morant Bay, you don’t see a white person,” said one resident.
Gollab, who supplies cane to the sugar factory, said more young people are turning to farming as the unemployment crisis becomes more severe.
