The people of mountainous Manchester are a hardy, determined lot.

It helps that, relative to the rest of the country, they are more disciplined and better led than most.

So when the closure of Alpart and Kirkvine in 2009 caused the bauxite/alumina industry to fall through the floor, ‘Manchesterians’ — who celebrated their 200th anniversary as a parish in 2014 — did not throw up their hands.

Instead, many ex-bauxite/alumina workers found alternate means of employment to support their families — not least through farming.

Crucially, their political, business and community leaders acted on much talk down the years regarding the need to find alternatives to bauxite/alumina.

That manifested itself materially in the development of a business outsourcing facility on Ward Avenue in Mandeville, now occupied since late last year by a world leader in outsourcing operations, Sutherland Global.

This newspaper believes Manchester Central Member of Parliament Peter Bunting deserves much credit for consistently articulating a vision for such knowledge-based industries in Mandeville. Blessed with some of the country’s leading tertiary institutions, Manchester is ideally placed for exactly that.

US-based Sutherland Global, which does business with some of the world’s leading corporations, now says it is employing 800 people at its Ward Avenue location.

It has plans to increase staff to 2,300 in Mandeville by year end, at which time the fortnightly wage bill will be about $120 million. By any reckoning that’s a big cash injection.

We expect entrepreneurs in Mandeville and its environs to respond with gusto to the call by Sutherland Global’s Jamaica head, Ms Odetta Rockhead-Kerr, to improve hospitality, accomodation and transportation to meet the demands not just of a rapidly expanding workforce, but also elite clientele with sophisticated tastes.

Also, her warning about the need to maintain and improve security in Mandeville must be heeded. For all the recent high-profile crimes, the town remains one of the safest urban centres in Jamaica.

But that’s cold comfort. Residents must be organised and mobilised to work with the police in protecting their community. Otherwise, criminals will undermine progress just as they have in several areas across the country.

The authorities must place priority in ensuring that the police are equipped to catch and deter criminals.

We cannot close without discussing water, which remains a big problem in most of Manchester. In truth, but for chronic water shortages, Mandeville would be economically well in advance of where it is now.

A major reason is the town’s topography. There are no rivers or lakes from which water can be drawn, and at well in excess of 2,000 feet above sea level, well-digging is not feasible. Mandeville has had to depend on expensive and limited supplies of domestic piped water from the well fields of Pepper in St Elizabeth to the south-west and Porus in the east.

In these circumstances, hardy ‘Manchesterians’ are returning to the tried and proven method of rain water catchment and storage to augment domestic water supplies. That’s in line with local authority regulations which require such facilities for building approvals. There can be no let-up in this regard.

In the months and years ahead, the rest of Jamaica will be watching with keen interest as Manchester makes its way, for the greater good of all.