MANDEVILLE, Manchester – The development of Mandeville as a heartland of Jamaican academia and a wellness centre of repute is central to what ruling People’s National Party (PNP) candidate Vando Palmer says is his vision for Central Manchester.

Addressing a recent luncheon meeting of the Rotary Club of Mandeville at the Golf View Hotel, Palmer argued that health and education would be crucial as Manchester moves to advance “its most special resource, its people” in the aftermath of bauxite/alumina.

For decades Manchester has been among the main sources of Jamaica’s bauxite. The bauxite/alumina industry which triggered foreign exchange inflows of $378.7 million on a national scale in 2005 is the mainstay of the parish’s economy and a major employer of labour.

But pointing out that “there are approximately 30 more years of bauxite ore left in our region but only about 20 years of mineable bauxite ore”, Palmer argued it was time for “Manchesterians” to look down the road.

“The big question: What after bauxite? How will Mandeville and its surrounds survive and maintain the exponential growth that is now taking place in our town and satellite communities?” he asked.

A communications specialist, Palmer is aspiring to replace outgoing PNP Member of Parliament John Junor in elections which are constitutionally due this year. He is slated to face the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP’s) Sally Porteous who is deputy mayor of Mandeville.

Palmer’s candidacy has been under review by the PNP hierarchy in recent months following allegations of spousal abuse. But PNP sources say the review has been concluded in Palmer’s favour and an official announcement would be made soon.

The aspiring MP told Rotarians that the presence of a fast-improving Northern Caribbean University (NCU), the Church Teachers’ College, and the Knox Community College, and that Central Manchester “has one of the highest volumes of traditional and new high schools in Jamaica outside of Kingston and Montego Bay”, provided the basis for the region’s development as an academic centre.

He visualised the construction of another high school in Mandeville, a new primary school in Bellefied, new basic schools in Banana Ground, Royal Flat, and Sunset Boulevard and the establishment of a computer-based technological skills training centre. This would “complement” traditional skills training such as carpentry, masonry, welding, electrical installation and woodwork which exist at Newport in the parish.

Education and training, should be so structured as to encourage and develop an “entrepreneurial spirit” so that graduates are able to make the transition to providing jobs for themselves and others, said Palmer.

Central Manchester’s “salubrious climate” and the existence of health infrastructure, including the Mandeville Regional Hospital and an array of pharmacies, meant the basis existed for a wellness centre, said Palmer.

But, he said, there was need for much improved services at the Mandeville Hospital to accommodate the poor – something he would be lobbying for. He argued that it was unreasonable and illogical to ask patients at the public hospital to go to a private institution to get “an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) that will cost $15,000 to $17,000” and that the government had a responsibility to make such services readily and cheaply available.

“Now if the (hospital patients) can’t find $500 to register, how are they going to find $17,000 for an MRI? You are actually sending them home to die.

“With a regional hospital offering excellent service and with additional agents outside offering more service, the groundwork has already been laid for Mandeville to become the wellness centre for our region,” Palmer said.

He said he would be proposing the use of the Hector’s River which runs along the Trelawny/Manchester border as the centrepiece of a plan to correct Mandeville’s chronic water problems which leave many without piped water on a daily basis. This, he said, would be in conjunction with an improvement of water flows from the “well fields” at Pepper in St Elizabeth on the South Manchester border.

His research had shown, he said, that at the “driest periods of the year” the Hector’s River could provide five to six million gallons of water for Mandeville. The method, he suggested, should involve the building of a treatment plant within close proximity of the river, pump the water from there to Mount Denham in northern Manchester which rises 700 feet above Mandeville.

“Once you pump from the river up to a storage tank at Mount Denham all you have to do is gravity feed into Mandeville. If you can send five to six million gallons of water daily from Mount Denham down here with an additional 3.5 millions from the well fields you are well on your way to provide Mandeville with an additional eight million gallons to take care of our needs for the next 10-15 years,” argued Palmer.

On crime and violence, which he argued had “crept up on us over the last 35 years and we have not done anything significantly about it” Palmer advocated the restructuring of community policing. He would be working to reactivate “every single” neighbourhood watch programme that may have gone dormant, Palmer said.

Recalling the high profile investigation of the murder of Mandeville business couple Richard and Julia Lyn late last year, Palmer noted that crime, including murder, rape and robbery, plagued the lives of ordinary people on a daily basis without them being “given the same kind of attention we give to others”.

Said Palmer: “We must level the playing field, the loss of one life is as important as any other regardless of who you are and what your stock is like on to.”