Since 1959 when Alcan, now Windalco, expanded its Jamaican operations and opened Ewarton Works in the north western St Catherine community, bauxite has been the economic lifeblood of Ewarton and surrounding communities.

Now that the company has announced its intention to close the site, at least temporarily on March 31, the area’s economic stability, as well as its infrastructural and social development has been threatened. Residents say they have come to depend on the company directly in terms of employment, potable water and educational opportunities. There were indirect benefits too, as it was the money earned from Windalco which kept businesses in the area afloat.

In spite of the grim forecast however, the people of Ewarton are determined that their town will not shrivel up and die and many of those with whom the Observer spoke, pledged they would return to farming, an activity which was relegated to the sidelines in bauxite’s heyday.

“Before bauxite there was agriculture. I guess we have to go back to our roots now. It’s not like we have a choice,” said co-ordinator of the Ewarton/Windalco JBI community council, Brian Perry.

“I believe the community can survive. We have the basics and the leadership structure to survive this,” he added.

“Everybody is going to start planting now, for that is the only solution,” said Charles Thomas, an elderly man who is among the 250 casual/temporary workers Windalco said it will cut over the next two months. He has been out of work since last Monday.

“If we just sit down we will drop on our face. We have to try [and] do a little ting. We can’t just sit down so,” he said. “We can’t sey ‘we nah go manage’. We have to manage because before I went down there I used to manage. I’m going to plant my field. pumpkin, banana, yam, calaloo.”

Thomas, who said he has been a machine operator at Ewarton Works for 17 years, revealed that his intention was not to sell the produce but to use it as subsistence and to share with his neighbours.

But until their crops mature and until they start to reap from their farms, the residents of Ewarton will have to face serious challenges.

The Observer got a sense of how pervasive the effects will be when, on a visit to the community last week, almost every other person to whom we spoke either used to work at Windalco or knew someone who did.

“It’s more than a loss… It was the largest employer of people around here,” said 66-year-old Donald Harrison, a justice of the peace who has lived in Ewarton all his life.

“Is a big sufferation, man. Everybody was depending on down there, you know, and all of a sudden you hear sey it lock down, so who used to work there all the while, what recompense dem going to get? I have bills to pay, light and rent,” said Thomas, adding that he also had grandchildren who depend on him.

“My wife not working, so it has a big impact on us,” said David Johnson, who told us he worked with Windalco for close to 17 years. “We’re just trying to put the best outside. It must be worse for people who are paying rent.”

Things don’t look promising either for shopkeepers Marcia Israel and Wilfred French whose establishments sit on Mount Rosser.

“A lot of young people round here, that’s where we get our income from, the bauxite company,” said Israel as she stood outside her yard on the busy winding mountain road that links Ocho Rios in the north with Spanish Town in the south. “If you’re running a small business you are depending on them (Windalco employees) because they stop by and they purchase, but now it’s out so what can we do? Nothing’s going on right now. Totally nothing.”

Added French: “It’s going to affect us a lot because nuff people depend on it. The few people who work there spend back with me. If they don’t spend with me I don’t have anything.”

Said construction worker Kerene McKenzie-Polson: “I have lived here for the past 31 years and basically, most men in Ewarton, that’s where they look to for their bread, and now that there’s a closure, trust me, it’s going to be very hard.”

Secretary of the Ewarton Police Youth Club, Trisann Nembhard, added her perspective on the negative effects Windalco’s closure will have on the community.

“We won’t suffer per se, but a lot of the sponsorship that we (the youth club) used to get we won’t have it,” she told the Observer. “A lot of young men will be unemployed, those who Windalco used to send to school, their parents will have to find some other means of sending them and a lot of the parents who were working there and sending their children to school will have a problem now sending them. It’s going to cause a chain reaction. A lot of people will be hurt by it.”

According to Nembhard, who is only 19 years old but who is very much involved in her community, a lot of young people, especially young men, head straight for Windalco when they leave high school because of the wealth of opportunities the company provided.

“My cousin, as he graduated, he went to Windalco, so a lot of them aim to go there for the experience and for educational opportunities as well because they send them back to school,” she said.

“[The closure] will affect them because they (Windalco) would offset a lot of the cost of CXC exams for the young people in the community and they provide CXC classes in the evening for adults who want to re-sit or who have never done the subject,” she said.

In the neighbouring town of Linstead, the effect is going to be similar.

“It will be a significant impact because bauxite workers have the potential to be the biggest spenders, so although the number of workers employed to Windalco may have been relatively small, they are still big earners who have the biggest potential to spend,” said Lloyd Lewis, chair of the Linstead Community Consultative Committee.

And in Faith’s Pen, from where the Schwallenberg Mines sent bauxite ore to Ewarton to be processed, the change is already evident. Derrick Graham, who said that he had been working in the maintenance department at Schwallenberg for more than 25 years before being sent home last week, described his home town as stagnant.

“It’s a big, big setback,” Graham lamented. “Right now my community stagnant. It’s not a very fast community normally. Most people have to do farming and one and two people have stalls where they sell food stuff.”

Like the residents of Ewarton, Graham said he would concentrate on his farm because he had to “try a little ting” to make sure that his family survives.

Graham said the fears in Faith’s Pen are that serious crimes will become commonplace since more people will be out of gainful employment. According to the Police Consultative Committee in Ewarton, there have been two murders in the area in the past two weeks but other than that serious crimes are few and far between.

“If nobody is working, little by little I can’t talk. I’m going to have my pot on the fire and I’m going to see man come in come tek it off,” Israel said.

But there are more pressing problems for both communities. Neither of them have piped water and both relied heavily on Windalco to truck water to their homes. Now, it seems, they will have to pay to get the water carried in.

“There is no water in the pipes for about 15 years now,” 70-year-old Ewarton resident Hubert English told the Observer.

Israel joined in: “No water at all. Not a drop. None. Further down the bottom they have a little bit, but you have to dangle the pipes to get any. If the truck (from Windalco) that normally comes don’t come and we cannot wait, we have to call a truck and pay for it and even to full a tank with water it’s like $5,000 and each drum is $100.”

Other concerns in Ewarton are that there is no garbage collection, no public market and according to Harrison, no strong political representation.

“With the advent of the new highway, which will bypass Ewarton totally, Ewarton will be a ghost town,” added Harrison. “The conditions here will worsen because there’ll be nobody passing through to buy from the small business people, and without a bauxite company, it will be just like a ghost town. What is lacking in Ewarton is strong political representation. The MP [Bobby Pickersgill] has been here for so long and you can’t really put yuh finger on any great programme or project that he implemented since his time,” said Harrison.

But while some may be sorry to see Windalco go, others won’t miss the environmental hazards the factory posed.

“The bauxite company has destroyed plenty of our environment, spoilt some of our trees and our houses through pollution from the plant that destroy the sheetings and house tops and we have to prove to them sometimes that it is their pollution and you know that’s difficult because it’s scientific. But away from that, it’s the best company I ever work with,” said Harrison, who was employed at Windalco as a millwright for close to 20 years.