SLEEPING with the door unlocked is something not even the bravest Kingstonian would chance in today’s Jamaica. But for east Portlanders, the practice is commonplace and harks back to a time when acts of crime and violence were rare and unusual.

“You can leave your house go party and nutten happen. Nobody here lock dem door,” says Donovan Campbell, a taxi operator from Hector’s River. “Hector’s River is the best community in east Portland. It is [virtually] crime free. The two likkle tief dem dat we have under control.”

Adds Dennis Patterson, a resident of Fairy Hill: “Now and again we have two robberies because people hungry, but we sleep comfortable. We nuh haffi sleep and fret about people coming in on us,” he tells the Sunday Observer.

As you travel further into the constituency, away from the azure coastline and into the lush greenery of the hugging hills, the stories of negligible crime rates are replicated.

“We have likkle crime now and then, but is mostly praedial larceny. A man wi go cut some finger a banana or dem ting deh,” says Orlando Smith from Moore Town.

What does plague the communities, however, is a high level of unemployment, occassioned some say, by the downturn in the banana and tourism sectors in Portland and St Mary on a whole. From Roland Field, Hector’s River, Long Road, Manchioneal, Reach, Long Bay, Fairy Hill, Windsor, to Seaman’s Valley, Kent, Moore Town, Stanton and Prospect, the story is the same.

Juliet Merchant sums it up well.

“We need jobs,” she says.

At one time, Merchant farmed acres and acres of coffee and banana in Kent where she lives. But these days, she takes whatever seasonal job she gets. For the next few weeks, Merchant will be packing stones in wire encasements on the site of the Alligator Church bridge. The encasements will form the retaining wall for the bridge which is being reconstructed at a cost in excess of $200 million.

“Banana dead out and when yuh sell coffee now, yuh cyaan get pay,” she says.

“We need a factory fi come inna di place fi export banana and coffee. We have di land. We have Seville and Navel orange can mek juice. When mango season, wi have mango fi stone dog,” she continues, listing products she thinks would make good agro-processing products.

In Manchioneal, where not less than 20 young people – both male and female – laze on the edge of the road by the beach, Merchant’s cries are echoed.

“We have whole heap ah young boys and young girls and ah nuh seh dem nuh have di head space, dem just nuh have nowhere fi go, nutten nuh deh yah fi dem do,” says Cecil Bentley.

“Wi nuh have no factory, no property fi work,” adds Kidroy “Freddie” Thompson.

In his opinion, a clothing factory specialising in underwear or an ackee processing plant are viable solutions to the youth unemloyment problem in Portland eastern.

Back in Moore Town, Smith, himself a farmer and shopkeeper, says jobs other than shopkeeping, bartending and farming are needed in east Portland.

“Most of the youth dem just idling all day because dem nuh have nutten fi do after school,” he tells the Sunday Observer.

Shaunna Swaby is a bartender who has only recently moved to Hector’s River. In her short time there, she has not witnessed or experienced any violence but she has come to understand the unemployment situation.

“Yuh haffi go Port Antonio to get work other than bar and shop work,” she says. “You can count on one hand the people dem weh get up ah mornin time and go out to work.”

For Natalie Brown, a resident of Roland Field, losing her job at Reach Falls would mean relocating to the Kingston Metropolitan Area. The attraction itself only has 15 employees, all of whom are from Portland eastern.

“A lot of people are unemployed here. There is just nowhere to gain employment apart from bars, teaching or nursing. If I were to leave now, I would have to go to the Corporate Area to find a job,” she says.

As for post-secondary training, Long Bay bartender Ann-Marie Henry thinks there is a lack of sufficient opportunities.

“There used to be a HEART Trust/NTA facility here but it closed. You now have to go to Annotto Bay. We need training places though because we have a lot of young people here sitting down not doing anything. A lot of them leave school and have nothing else to do,” she says.

The cause for the high unemployment, says Patterson, is the downturn in tourism. He once worked in the hotel industry in the parish but has been operating a public passenger bus since the closure of a number of hotels, including Trident and Dragon Bay.

“There are no tourists and no cruise ships to Port Antonio anymore, so a lot of people are unemployed. All the hotels close down. Dragon Bay close down, Lee Chin buy out Trident and seh him going to fix it but him close it down.

Others like himself who lost their jobs in the hotels, Patterson says, have also turned to taxi and bus operation, which he describes as the biggest employers in east Portland.

“Portland get a beating beause most people depended on tourism,” he says.

There are few guest houses in the parish as well, but like Reach Falls, they operate on a small scale and are unable to absorb those axed by the hotels.

Other than needing jobs, many of the communities in Portland eastern need improved road conditions and at least one – Windsor – needs piped water.

The National Works Agency (NWA) is currently repairing the coastal road from Hector’s River to Folly but many roads in the interior of the constituency are in disrepair.

“The road in Moore Town look like the riverbed,” said one man who did not give his name. “From Fellowship come up we nuh have no road and ah suh mi born come see it. If government can make good road we nuh have no problem because we can have good road fi go out and look work.”

But the increased cost of travel caused by the bad roads has others miserable. The bridge linking the communities of Kent and Bellevue to Seaman’s Valley, en route to Port Antonio, is now under construction after years of disrepair. Until it is complete – by the end of December according to NWA projections – residents have to pay $70 from either Kent or Bellevue to one side of the bridge, walk on a temporary foot path across the river to the other side of the bridge, and pay another $130 to Port Antonio.

To make matters worse, residents say they have little hope their problems will be addressed because they don’t feel that they have any support from their political representative Dr Donald Rhodd of the People’s National Party.