Phyllis Thomas, Enterprise Editor
Audley Shaw - IAN ALLEN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
AUDLEY SHAW is satisfied with how he has been spending his allocations from the Social and Economic Support Programme (SESP).
His assured, almost chest-thumping comportment as he accounted for those expenditures, seems justified when one examines his flagship project - yes, a project - using tissue culture and greenhouse technology in the production of crops including potato, in Devon Manchester. It is a project with potential for major expansion and employment which has so far caught the attention of international agencies like USAID. The Ministry of Agriculture is said to be coming on board as well.
"It is a project with the Christiana Potato Growers' Cooperative. Their original product was Irish potato but Irish potato for a number of reasons had been declining as a commodity, largely in part because of the expensive input - fertiliser - and the cost of the imported seedlings," Mr. Shaw explained. "We are looking now at creating our own Irish potato seedlings through tissue culture. At the same time, we are looking at planting materials for sweet potatoes, for ginger which has been in trouble and for what is called left-man cocoa (a root crop)."
TISSUE CULTURE
He said the eventual plan is to have about 16 greenhouses that will be able to propagate millions of clean, disease-free planting materials "that we will have produced under fairly sterile conditions" using the technologies of tissue culture and greenhouse.
With an initial contribution of $120,000 from his SESP allocation, the pilot project was launched and "the USAID has now chipped in with US$7,000 ... the Minister of Agriculture has advised me that he has a new programme through the ASSP (Agricultural Support Services Project) under which they are going to chip in. So our ambition to have 16 greenhouses is now well on the way". Mr. Shaw's original commitment to the project is US$4,000.
Alvin Murray, general manager of the Christiana Potato Growers' Cooperative, said they have spent US$4,200 on the purchase and shipment of the first greenhouse from Israel. It has an anti-viral meshing which will protect the seedlings from insect infestation.
SRC INTEREST
At the time of the interview with Mr. Murray, he said representatives from the Scientific Research Council had been on site as they too had an interest in the project.
Mr. Shaw, looking at the future of the project, sees big things to come like the generation of other industries and jobs - with the propagation and selling of seedlings to farmers at minimal or subsidised prices the cottage industries, the food-processing plants and venturing into export. So he beamed, "I am not just satisfied, I'm proud!"
He is also satisfied with a minor water supply project which sees several communities now able to access domestic water from tanks. He has, through SESP, helped to restore about 10 catchment tanks which have capacity of 100,000 gallons which he said he found abandoned when he became MP for the constituency.
"These are massive things ... In a typical rural district, that tank once it is full, can serve that district two to three months. That's how important it is."
RESTORING TANKS
He said while money from his SESP allocation started the repairs, the Caribbean Development Bank and the National Water Commission have also helped to restore every tank "bar none". Restoration was done over a four-year period.
He paraded, too, his contribution to the improvement of basic schools, using SESP.
"In North East Manchester, we have built or restored a total of 16 basic schools over the past four years and they are now beautiful, well appointed." The bulk of the funds came from the Jamaica Social Investment Fund and Lift Up Jamaica, but SESP was used in the initial stages.
But not everything smells like sweet roses in Mr. Shaw's camp. He is scaling down on his assistance to education and will eventually end it.
"We were getting $4.8 million; I am now down to $2.2 million so something has to give." This will impact on assisting with cost-sharing, tuition and books. He said he had already started winding down and regretted having to do it because sometimes there was real destitution out there.
Mr. Shaw explained the contributions he and Richard Azan, MP for North Western Clarendon, made to the Percy Junor Hospital's tiling project. He said the hospital fits physically in his constituency, but the average person calls it the Spaldings Hospital because it is very close to Spaldings, Clarendon - in fact, it is literally on the border of the parishes. He said too, that the project, spearheaded by the Friends of the Hospital, cost $2.360 million. Both himself and Mr. Azan contributed $100,000 each.
In defending it, he said a subtraction of the $200,000 that both paid left $2.160 million, for which the private sector is responsible.
"I am saying to you, the hospital serves substantially areas of North West Clarendon, for which Mr. Azan is MP, and it serves North East Manchester and sections of Trelawny and sections of South West St. Ann. For that matter, (Devon) McDaniel (MP for South Trelawny) and Ernest Smith (MP for South West St Ann) should contribute something too ... It's good duplication. It's positive duplication."
SESP REPLACEMENT
Mr. Shaw has visions for the replacement of the SESP. He said he is going to be defending a concept of a dedicated constituency fund which would see MPs getting in the region of $50 million to $100 million per constituency. "But it has to be scrupulously managed and forensically audited on an annual basis. It has to be principally confined to capital development and and capital expenditure. It has to be targeted to clear areas of need ... so that at the end of the period we can look and see buildings, cottage industries, factories ... whatever are the particular needs of the community."
Shaw's spending
Education - $900,000
Christmas Work Programme - $1,050,000
Tiling of Percy Junor Hospital - $100,000
Greenhouse project - $120,000
Cleaning drains - $180,000
Youth club gears - $148,018.56
4H Centre at Long Pond - $24,340
Emergency medication - ;$11,222.77
Med. diagnosis at public hospital - $34,000
Christiana Primary canteen repair - $50,000
Labour Day projects - $6,867.67
(Total budget: $2,624,449 for 2004/05)
