MONTEGO BAY, St James

Citing health concerns and the possibility of a loss in their property value, residents of the middle-class community of West Green here have rejected a proposal by telecommunications giant Digicel to erect a cellular tower in their community.

At a stormy meeting with representatives of Digicel at the Cannon Muffler Centre in the community on Sunday, the residents urged the telecommunications company to examine the possibility of installing the tower on lands in the nearby commercial district or at the Pye River cemetery instead.

“We don’t want it here, take it to the cemetery or the commercial section where there are no houses,” said the more than 100 residents in attendance at the meeting.

Digicel is proposing to build the 45-metre cellular tower on the property of Felix Headley at Cannon Mufflers in the area.

Already the company’s application has received approval from the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) for the construction of the facility, and is now awaiting final approval from the St James Parish Council before it begins construction.

President of the West Green Citizens Association, Vilma Clarke says the residents are also peeved that the telecommunications company did not consult with them before making an application to the authorities.

“We were not consulted on the matter before and we see it as being disrespectful,” she said.

Digicel already has at least five cell towers within a two-mile radius in the Montego Bay area, and this has caused residents on Sunday to further question the rationale for another cell tower in the resort city.

But Sasha Ruddock, a senior site acquisition executive at Digicel told the obviously disgruntled residents that the towers have almost reached their capacity.

” The site at Bevin Avenue (located a few metres from West Green) is congested, and with the construction of a stadium at Catherine Hall and the steady increase in population we have to be proactive and increase our capacity and coverage in order to serve you better,” she told the residents.

She also sought to assure them that radiation from cell towers is not harmful, adding that her company is operating well within international standards.

However, the residents pointed to an article citing the opinions of over 100 physicians and scientitsts at the Harvard and Boston University Schools of Public Health that cell phone towers constitute a radiation hazard.

It is not clear if Digicel will go ahead and construct the site, if approval is granted by the St James Parish Council, but Ruddock told the Observer West that ” we (Digicel) are willing to work with the residents.”

Efforts to contact chairman of the St James Parish Council Charles Sinclair were unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, Clarke said yesterday that her association is busy getting citizens in the Catherine Hall and West Green communities- where there are more than 1,000 residents -to sign a petition against the installation of the cell tower in the area.

The petition, she added, will be sent to the council.