TAXPAYERS continue to pay hefty bills to provide round-the-clock security for the rundown Goodyear tyre factory in St Thomas more than a decade after $143 million of public money was spent to construct another building adjoining the decaying structure to house an information technology park.

Today, both the newer building and the frame of the factory sit idly with no indication as to if, or when they will ever be put to use.

And despite security guards being posted 24 hours at the property since the plant was closed in 1997, vandals have, over the years, still been able to make off with a majority of the windows, doors and roofing of the older building. The newer building, which was to have housed the call centre, is now tightly boarded up to keep it from a similar fate as the now scrapped factory building.

A broken-down perimeter fence around the 28-acre property also allows scores of goats to roam freely on the property.

“Them have security guards here day and night since the factory close and people still go over there and tief off everyting off the building,” said resident Darrion Nugent.

According to Nugent, it was believed that the previous security personnel were working in conjunction with the vandals who were able to cart off entire windows and huge pieces of metal without being apprehended.

“Dem and the security guard dem did a work together because people go over dere and tek all what dem want,” he said.

While the Jamaica Observer was unable to obtain the exact cost to Government for securing the unoccupied property, the figure is believed to be in the millions of dollars per year, given that security guards are paid in the region of $180.76 per hour. This means a 24-hour shift would cost $4,338; $30,367 for the week; $121,470 for the month and $1.4 million for the year.

The figure would be considerably more when calculated at the rate that is paid to the security company for the services of the guards.

A source who spoke on condition of anonymity said at least two to three guards are posted at the facility on any given day.

“Yes, it is providing an income for the security guards but they are the only ones benefiting because this is just such a big waste and disappointment for the people of St Thomas,” he said, pointing in disgust at the massive structure situated along the Morant Bay main road.

The source said there is also a regular cost associated with bushing of the property which is done a few times per year. However, when the Jamaica Observer team visited, the grass appeared not to have been cut in a long time as we were forced to wade through knee-high grass, in some areas, to get through the broken fence and into the dilapidated factory.

According to the source, the property offers no value to the parish as its only “worthwhile use” is to facilitate the Jamaica Public Service Company and the National Water Commission, which currently store equipment at the back of the buildings.

The source said potential investors are still coming to look at the facility, but none of these visits have apparently borne any fruit.

“Even just last week one man come out here to look at it but him never seem like him too interested in it,” the source said, even as he added that residents will be far more sceptical at any new proposal for the facility, given the past experience.

In 2005, then minister of commerce, science and technology Phillip Paulwell announced that the property was to be converted into a call centre through funding from charity group Upliftment Jamaica.

“They intend to establish a call centre facility and over time, hundreds of residents of the parish will be employed here after being trained,” Paulwell announced then.

However, by 2006 there was an uproar over the proposed sale of the former Goodyear plant as a last-minute bid to divest it became mired in controversy as the transparency of the process was questioned by the then Opposition Jamaica Labour Party members of Parliament’s Standing Finance Committee (SFC).

The questions were raised after Paulwell admitted that the Cabinet was studying a proposal to sell the 23-acre property to the sole bidder — Upliftment Jamaica.

In March 2006, then Government Senator Noel Sloley admitted to the Senate that a mistake was made in investing millions of dollars in the failed technology park planned for the property.

“I tell you, the decision that I had to make … I was eventually put in charge of the company that owned it and I took the decision to halt the construction,” Senator Sloley said of the facility. “We have put security on it (the property) to protect the people’s asset until such time (as a decision on future action is made).”

However, that decision has apparently not yet been made nearly seven years later, as the facility still lies in ruin.

Concerns were also raised that not only was millions of taxpayers’ dollars wasted in the failed effort, but also that the then Cable and Wireless Jamaica had also injected $90 million into the flopped exercise, as part of its telecommunications deal with the Government in 2000.

Prior to that revelation, the auditor general had found that a loan for $225 million was made by the National Insurance Fund to the Factories Corporation of Jamaica to finance information technology projects in 2003, including the Goodyear park.

In June 2008, then Justice Minister Dorothy Lightbourne announced that the Goodyear building was to be used as a temporary courthouse to serve the parish.

The decision was taken because witnesses and litigants in St Thomas were having to travel to Kingston for circuit and gun-court matters, after fire gutted the Morant Bay courthouse in 2007. However, that plan also failed to get off the ground.

Last June, Paulwell, who now has responsibility for science, telecommunications, energy and mining, told the Observer that the facility, which is owned by the Factories Corporation of Jamaica, is now the portfolio responsibility of his colleague minister of commerce and industry Anthony Hylton.

Hylton, however, could not be reached at press time for an update.

Meanwhile, Paulwell explained that at the time of the call centre announcement, talks were ongoing with investors out of India to relocate a number of their call centres to Jamaica, but that they later decided against it.

“The people we were in touch with later lost interest and then the elections intervened and that was the end of that,” he said.

Paulwell indicated then that there were, however, other developments afoot.

“I gather there is some interest being shown to do some other things with the facility,” he said a year ago.

But the residents, with whom the Observer spoke last week, have since given up hope that the former tyre manufacturing plant will ever be utilised for anything beneficial to the parish, given the many failed promises over the years.

“The factory was like St Thomas food basket and from it close is like we dead,” said Nugent, who used to work as a weekend janitor at the factory.

Nugent, who now sells jelly coconuts along the main road in front of the property, said his business would fare much better if the factory was up and running.

“Everyday people pass and say watch how Goodyear become a woodland when it was one of the prettiest place around when me was younger,” Nugent said.

Another resident, Sean Holding, said he has grown weary of hoping that this ‘white elephant’ will ever be utilised again.

“You know the amount ah people me see come tek picture and walk go look over dere and nutten no happen? In the earlier days me did think say someting woulda come of those visits, but we not even pay dem no mind no more when them come look because we know nutten nah come of it,” he said.

The Goodyear tyre factory in St Thomas.

This scrapped section of the Goodyear tyre factory is open to the elements.

Most of the roofing of the Goodyear tyre factory is gone.

Another section of the Goodyear factory that has been damaged.