Kerr-Jarrett

Gareth Manning, Sunday Gleaner Reporter

While the Simpson Miller Administration is excited about the economic prospects of large scale hotel developments, civic leaders in St. James worry these could become two-edged swords causing unplanned, crime-proned communities to mushroom.

Faced with the rising incidence of violent crimes in several of these informal settlements, stakeholders in the tourism-dominated parish are calling on government to provide housing and social amenities in anticipation of the thousands of people who will be employed by new resort operations.

The Simpson Miller Administration plans to create an additional 12,000 hotel rooms and 15,000 direct jobs by 2010.

But stakeholders do not believe enough is being done to accommodate the droves of people who are expected to migrate from other parts of the country in search of employment.

"We have these massive hotels being built and not one housing solution being (implemented)," says chairman of the St. James Parish Development Committee (PDC), Mark Kerr-Jarrett. He was speaking during a Gleaner Editors' forum held recently, in Montego Bay.

He contends that several squatter communities in the parish, now hotbeds for violent crimes, emerged during the growth of the tourism sector in the late 1960's to the 1980's — churning out some 20,000 jobs for locals, but not enough housing solutions.

"The people came to Montego Bay for the jobs, and kotched and that is where Flankers, Norwood, Rose Heights, some of Glendevon, Salt Spring and Farm Heights came from," recounts Kerr-Jarrett, who is also a real estate developer. These communities are among other squatter settlements in and around Montego Bay that contribute to 70 per cent of the 171 murders in St. James to date. Many of the residents are poor and exist without basic infrastructure such as potable water, light and roads.

"All we are doing (now) is setting up ourselves for a problem of the same nature (in the past)," he warns.

Tourism expansion programme

His concerns are similar to those expressed in a study of the tourism expansion programme commissioned by the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ). The Tourism Bauxite Expansion Study: Framework Programme for Action, produced in 2005, which indicated that owing to the current and largely uncontrolled patterns of development, resort towns could be quickly transformed by both formal and informal housing when the hotel projects were completed.

The study adds that informal settlements will create an enormous burden on both local and national governments. According to the document 38,628 solutions will be needed by 2011. A large number of those houses will be needed in Trelawny, St. Ann, St. James and Westmoreland.

"It will be desirable for local new employees to remain in the communities where they now live, while new housing developments should be incorporated into existing communities ... This will require and necessitate rapid, targeted attention to local development plans and prioritised improvements to local road conditions and other infrastructure," the study recommends.

Squatter community

Kerr-Jarrett echoes a similar theme: "We have to build the houses now while the hotels are under construction. Once (they) open it will be too late, because the people have already found a kotch and the squatter community has started and now you are going to have to go in and fix a problem, which is more expensive."

He is calling on the state-run National Housing Corporation and the National Housing Trust to formulate housing plans to complement the current expansion programme.

He says the private sector alone cannot roll out plans for development; it has to be complemented by infrastructural development by the Government.

The St. James PDC chairman argues the inaccessibility of these communities makes it hard for the police to provide effective service to the areas and so the communities develop their own rule of law, which is dictated by 'dons' and gangs who proliferate crime and violence.