The Gleaner's Editors' Forum last week travelled to the cool, lush Mandeville where some 47 leading personalities from that area gathered at the Golf View hotel to discuss burning issues affecting the parish of Man-chester. The group represented social, civic, health, education, farming, religion, tourism and business interests in the fast developing township and surrounding communities. Here are excerpts from the discussion:
ON PRODUCTION, AGRICULTURE AND EXPORT
Don Cover President , Manchester Chamber of Commerce:
A survey of investment over the past 10 years or so revealed that outside of the bauxite industry the only meaningful investments have been in services, hardware stores, retail outlets, banking, we have all the banks here in Mandeville. The farming industry has expanded very little bit.
We are presently trying to organise the farmers to get into farming, but no factory has been installed, no productive capacity, no export capability, and just about the only thing that's keeping the economy of Manchester is the hardware retail outlet operations.
Stephen Lynkeechow Businessman:
I think one of the things that the Government should address here for us exporters is that they should identify companies which export and make them be like pilots for investment. Whereby we could work with Government in areas where tax relief is available and where we could even be given subsidies to support our efforts.
Stafford Haughton Businessman:
The cost of doing business in Jamaica is very high. Two of our largest costs are the cost of security and the cost of our telephone and our electricity. And there is no focus by our Government on renewable energy in Jamaica and we have merely 100 points in Jamaica where you can do hydro plant that can provide cheap electricity but the incentive is not there.
One of the threats we face as a nation, as a population, is the fact that because we are not providing the kind of remuneration for persons who come into the workplace they would rather sit at home and wait on the remittances from overseas or the underground economy to support them, and until we can build a stronger real economy and not be threatened by an underground economy that is said to be over 40 per cent of what happens in business in Jamaica that's a part of the solution.
And I find that some of the persons who come to me for work will not work at the salary I can offer them because what they get from overseas from relatives is more than what I can offer them.
Paul DeClue Kendal farmer/businessman:
In our communities we have a lot of resources. We sit on our resources like rattlesnakes in our communities. We can form a farm membership union and work together in small groups. I am a farmer and I am proud to say I am a very successful farmer. There are 92 parcels of land that are leased to other farmers that remain non-productive.
I am about to form a farmers union because we cannot sit and do nothing. We can utilise the resources.
There has been the talk about marketing. And people needing to find markets when their produce are ready but it is also a situation as to when and how you plant. You find, for example, all the farmers are all planting tomatoes at the same time, everybody doing carrots at one time. And then you have this in large numbers and people cannot get markets for it.
Some will get it, of course. But then there are times when these items are scarce.
So it's not just as situation of marketing, it's a situation of planning and how you do your planting so that is something that needs to be taken into consideration.
We don't need another decade to think Jamaica is vanishing. You can't milk a walking cow. I am saying it is time for the Government to go to the people and take their proposal and look at it. You need to take the proposals of the people, look into it see what we can work with and implement that.
Major Noel Williams Jamalco:
We at Jamalco are in partnership with Alpart in the Alpart mining venture which is in the Harmonds Valley, and I would like to personally thank Supt. Quallo for the role he has played late last year, the mediating role and the police in Mandeville did a terrific job in making the mining venture work.
ON EDUCATION AND JOB CREATION:
Byron Farquharson, Mandeville Primary & Junior High School:
Generally speaking, the graduates of my school are still students who move on to secondary education. It is correct to say large numbers of our graduates are not able to move into jobs. What I think is happening, though, is that a fair amount of them are moving to further education, recognising that at least it's better to keep on studying with hope rather than to give up without finding a job.
Dr. Herbert Thompson President Northern Caribbean University:
Permit me to speak on the economic situation in Mandeville and the surrounding areas. What is it that we need to survive and what are the contributions that we think we make at the university. Last August we graduated 670 people from the various disciplines; from nursing, medical technology, computer science, teacher education, religion and theology, commerce, business, et cetera.
As it turns out because we have student representation from 37, 38 countries, in any one semester, you will understand that when people graduate, although 65, 68 per cent of them are from Jamaica, others of them go off back to their countries of origin, et cetera. Many of the business persons in the Mandeville area, however, testify that they do have our graduates in the banking system, in the bauxite industry, in the area of nursing, in medical technology and the other paramedical profession. Our graduates are holding their own and are people who are not only well-skilled and qualified but they carry a certain high level of integrity with them, which is a critical thing for our economic survival because we are so lacking in that. And so we feel that with our student population just a little over 4,500 we are making a contribution, and I don't know that there is any great backlog of graduates who cannot find work.The university has a placement service and many of our graduates, our potential graduates, have indicated where they would like to work and we have helped them to find jobs.
June McCatty, Knox Community College:
I would like to see two things considered. Knox Community College has had a programme where we tried taking education into the community.
There are young people who have left the primary and junior high schools who probably have not been able to get tertiary level education or skill. We decided to try taking our education into the community centres into the rural sections of Manchester and Clarendon. We did two such projects and they were really great.
And I have seen in some areas where our human resources, our Jamaican people are lauded wherever they go for their good work, their ability to work and work well, and I would just like to know if the Government could look more into exporting some of our human resources, those young people who can't get jobs here. We hear about farm workers going. We hear about teachers going. We hear about nurses going, could we do it on a more systematic basis so that not only the people who're exported but also the country could benefit?
Stephanie Hutchinson from Social Development Comm-ission, SDC:
Just to say I think Mandeville is very fortunate in that we have approximately 10 institutions that offer training at tertiary level. However, when you go into the rural areas you find that there is still a high level of unemployment and that is because you have persons who have not completed even primary schools. Most of these persons are skilled persons, they are tradesmen, they learned a skill by working with somebody or they are farmers.
You will find that those persons are not making use of what is available. I am not sure what is happening with JAMAL, whether it has just fallen by the wayside, but we need more remedial education for these persons so that we can get them into the workforce. And also for Mandeville, one of the things that I found is that a lot of the jobs that are being offered is for sales clerk.
So what we are offering, the employment opportunities in Mandeville is also limited, although you have persons coming in from Black River who will go to the Liberal Arts College or who will attend MIND or any other institution.
Diana McIntyre-Pike Businesswoman:
We have been focusing on developing individuals from social investment the people who have not completed school, who have talents and they have no future in their mind because they are sitting at home in the rural areas, and we have had a very high success rate with these people.
We have trained over the last two years 2,000 people, approximately, and 85 per cent of them have jobs because they have the right attitude after we groom them. We taught them to know about their community, their country and the hospitality industry is not just hotels, it's everything, and as a result of that we are able to open that up and show them that even within their own community they can have a business. So there is a vast potential through community tourism and also within community tourism we have agriculture, farming. Many of them are sitting there and things were dropping off the trees and rotting. An opportunity is there because the industry wants these vegetables and fruits but there is no proper network set up to let us know what is available.
Jean Anderson Business-woman:
To me when walking around Mandeville I see workmen every day with their tools going to work. They didn't go to university. And we probably got the best network of schools in Jamaica. Tradesmen, they learn on the job as we are always building. This is one of the areas that is booming and still remain viable in central Jamaica and south.
ON SECURITY:
Supt. George Quallo Police officer in charge of Manchester Division:
There are a number of programmes that are on stream. As matter of fact, last year we launched two new initiatives. One is the set up of a special team to deal with warrants.
Now, a lot of the warrants that we have, outstanding are for traffic offenders. Now, what we have been doing in part of our community relations outreach is to identify those persons and to make arrangements with those persons to come at a given date when the warrant can be executed on the morning in question and the persons brought before the court. It prevents us from packing up an already crowded cell space, and it also enhances the relationship that we have with the police and the public.
We have a very vibrant Victim Support Unit where we offer mediation, we offer counselling, and here I must pause to mention the partnership that exists between ourselves, Victim Support Unit and Northern Caribbean University.<>
Supt. Franklyn Mitchell Chief Investigator for Manchester:
My role is the crime portfolio. Now, as the police we are having difficulty with the ID parades because there is no one-way mirrors, the modern way of identifying criminals, in Manchester. There is only one in the complete area that serves three parishes. Each parish at any given week will have 15 persons for an ID parade and it is causing a problem.
When we take prisoners into St. Elizabeth sometimes they have parades arranged for their prisoners, as also Clarendon, and because we cannot bring complainants to ID prisoners in the original old parade way, where complainants face the suspect face up, they will not come to these parades and invariably you can't blame them. We need the one-way mirror.
Don Cover President Manchester Chamber of Commerce:
Whereas Supt. Quallo has been trying to do a good job, I was disappointed to hear that he is doing that with a fleet of old vehicles over 10 years old; he has two motorcycles which sometimes don't work. And, also, we speak about 180 new vehicles I understand the security force got, none was sent to Manchester.
So, yes, it is a compliment to him that he has done what he has done, but I really would like the powers that be to recognise that if we are really serious about the issue of crime then we need to make sure the police have what it takes to fight the crime.
Chorvelle Johnson Dehring Bunting and Golding:
What we would like the police to do, when they know that there are wanted men in the area or suspicious men in the area who are changing dollars from bank to bank, sometimes they (the police) have pictures of these individuals so we would really appreciate if they could at least inform us about what is happening. Because if we don't hear from other banks or other cambios, et cetera, then we don't know what is happening in the town. So more information coming from the police would be better for us.
Sally Porteous Politician:
I wonder why we don't lobby harder for things like more patrols, more cars, more traffic cops and a two-way mirror in his station to be able to identify criminals.
ON TRAFFIC CONGESTION IN MANDEVILLE:
Jean Anderson Business- woman:
I look forward to the day when I don't have to drive through that little town I love called Mandeville and see traffic, gridlock in the town. Nobody seems to be able to get the thing under control.
Diana McIntyre-Pike Businesswoman (with particular interest in tourism)
I think the greatest stress for us as business people is driving in the centre of Mandeville. And the parking, I know there are no-parking areas and I see people double parking on the street. For example, when you drive into Hotel Street sometimes you can't drive in there because the cars are on both sides and Hotel Street is near the police station. We are asking, Supt. Quallo if you could just have that monitored for us. And also coming up from where Courts is, that road, there is no stop sign there, so what they are doing is driving up and you are trying to get into Hotel Street and then there are near crashes there. So if you could put back a stop sign there or a "Give Way" sign so people will not be intimidated. But, the centre of town on a whole is really very stressful to drive in, and also at the school area going down by Bishops, Decartet.
Stafford Haughton Businessman:
My observation is that when the morning starts the police are out there early because of the public transportation problems. They are out early and they pretty much can organise the flow of the traffic around the town square which really is where the congestion is, but by early afternoon most of those officers are gone. What they need to do is to have more policemen deployed like from say 7:00 in the morning back to at least eight o' clock in the evening to keep the taxis and the buses in the areas where they ought to be and to keep the traffic flowing around with the pedestrians on the road.
Join us in tomorrow's Gleaner for the continuation of this two-part series
