Transforming the bauxite community
Editorial
Guyana Chronicle
April 28, 2004
MR. AUDLEY Shaw, Jamaica's Opposition spokesman on finance, has proposed the establishment of a J$500-million fund for "human and infrastructure" development in communities with bauxite deposits that have been mined out.
So reported the Jamaica Observer yesterday.
"The basis of Mr. Shaw's suggestion, insofar as we understand it," editorialized the Observer, "is that bauxite is a finite resource. On the basis of existing and future investments to expand alumina plants, Jamaica's bauxite deposits will be depleted in another 50 to 60 years. At the end of the process, therefore, Jamaica should have something to show for the exploitation of a resource that is non-renewable."
Mr. Shaw did not put it exactly that way; he focused more specifically on communities where bauxite has been mined and believed to be left with little or no infrastructure or other forms of development. The fund, Mr. Shaw suggested, would help to rectify such shortcomings.
"If Mr. Shaw is correct about the state of development in these communities," added the Observer, "it would seem that a special fund that was established by the bauxite/alumina firms in the mid-1990s, and overseen by the Jamaica Bauxite Institute (JBI), has not performed. It was established, with over $100 million initially, to do precisely some of the things which Mr. Shaw now says should be done with a special scheme."
That Jamaica is trying to grapple with the economic survival of its bauxite communities after their natural resource will have been mined out is commendable.
Concern for the future of a bauxite community no longer enjoying the fruits of resource revenues isn't peculiar to Jamaica, however. Guyana is a model case in point.
Even before a change of government in October of 1992, plans had been in train for the bauxite community of Linden to survive independently of LINMINE - Linden Mining Company. Reports indicate that the Hoyte administration had drawn up a strategy for community self-reliance over the medium term.
But the first comprehensive plan to get off the drawing board and on to the implementation stage materialized when the Jagdeo administration successfully negotiated a billion dollar aid agreement with the European Union. The result is the Linden Economic Advancement Programme (LEAP).
Launched in 2002, LEAP envisages the expenditure of some $2.2 billion to create and sustain more opportunities for the 15,000 residents whose future in that community looked grim with the continued decline in the world bauxite industry.
Of the total of 12 million euros being provided for LEAP by the European Union, 600,000 euros is being made available for micro-credit and 1.3M euros for funding small and medium scale enterprises. It is envisaged that by the end of the seven-year duration of LEAP, that is, by 2009, at least 750 Lindeners will have been transformed into entrepreneurs, jobs will have been created for no fewer than 1,700 residents in Linden's business sector alone, and thousands more will have qualified and earning "career" incomes as computer specialists - 200 of whom will be employed in a call center - and other categories of professionals.
Even so, Linden doesn't have only LEAP going for it. Many central government, Interim Management Committee and non-governmental programmes are simultaneously being implemented to transform the now-depressed bauxite community into an economic giant.
Indeed, the transforming of a bauxite community languishing from years of declining bauxite revenues isn't peculiar to Jamaica.