JISCO/Alpart closed down its production operations on September 27 without much fanfare from the media. The gates are closed temporarily until, hopefully, mid 2021 when the owners see improved marketing and operational conditions.

The closing of a large investment like Alpart is a sad state of affairs. Over 1,500 direct jobs, and another 500 indirect jobs, have gone with the wind. South St Elizabeth, Clarendon, and a great part of Manchester and Westmoreland will be affected. It’s a mighty blow to the hope of many Jamaicans who would have pinned their future to the Alpart lifeline.

Even those who are opposed to bauxite mining and the bauxite industry must feel a flutter of concern for employees and their families, schools, vendors, shopkeepers, small businesses, charitable institutions, farmers, community development programmes, sports youth development, and community outreach now negated by the absence of a company so often referred to by locals as “fi mi Govament”.

Business in Nain and Junction, and in smaller districts and communities, are already feeling the pinch. So many people now face a bleak Christmas, with uncertainty in handling expenses relating to mortgages, school fees, or car loans.

Communities are hoping that the company will keep key community-related departments in full operation with an eye on ensuring that the neighbouring residents can retain a sense of ownership and participation in the planned future for the plant.

In 2009, at the time of closure, the Community Council came into its own when it assumed supervision and employment of hundreds of local peoples who worked on shift to mothball the equipment. This time around the council should be fine-tuned and up and running, ready to keep the community interest focused on a rejuvenated Alpart when it reopens.

Alpart, born in 1969, is a citizen, an institution, a neighbour, a family member of the south St Elizabeth landscape. It offers work, water, compensation, community support, educational support, agricultural support, local purchases, employment, and a model sports club that is the centre for regional sports in that part of Jamaica.

Still, it is a cussing stone and a beating stick whenever the operations misbehave and disturbs the environment as it periodically does. But don’t get too misled by the threats and demands that sometimes rise up when the emissions go over the fence.

There is a strong family relationship between Alpart and its local communities, between Alpart and the education sector, the agricultural agencies, the teachers’ associations, the civic bodies, the service clubs, the colleges and schools, the community clubs, and yes, the man in the street.

Alpart may not be able to offer employment to everyone, but it is a sure bet that for every St Elizabeth family at least one family member is employed at “Plant”, as it is called.

This is the third time around for Alpart. It closed in 1985, again in 2009, and now saddest of all, in 2019. Shuttered or not, Alpart has always carried the hopes and aspirations of thousands on its shoulders. ‘New alumina plant planned’, screamed the headlines on June 10, 1966, as the announcement came that Anaconda, Reynolds and Kaiser had joined in a multimillion-dollar project to build a 950,000-ton annual capacity plant on the former site of Kaiser Bauxite in St Elizabeth.

More than 5,000 Jamaicans were involved in the building of the plant, and a media story reported that “feats of engineering skills, hitherto unknown to Jamaica, are being performed in the construction, where the giant digesters are being put into place by equally large cranes, and the huge tanks and kilns assembled and welded together on the spot by trained Jamaican workmen”. And, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, May 18, 1969, three years after the start of construction, the Alpart plant went into operation.

On Friday, March 6, 1970, fanfare and music by the Jamaica Military Band marked the official opening by Prime Minister Hugh Shearer, accompanied by Robert Lightbourne, minister of trade and industry; Michael Manley, Opposition leader; and J H Lindemuth, representing Kaiser Aluminum.

Prayers were said by Cyril Swaby, Anglican bishop of Jamaica; John McEleney SJ, Roman Catholic archbishop of Kingston; and Rev Cleve Grant, vice-president of the Jamaica Council of Churches.

The opening of this plant was a matter of great joy and pride for thousands who were now seeing employment on the largest scale ever experienced in that part of the island.

That Friday morning was to live long in the memory of those who participated in the ceremony. For example, Rev Cleve Grant returned in 1999 to bless Alpart’s 30th anniversary celebrations. He brought with him, and proudly showed me, a special memento he had received at the official opening — a small hourglass souvenir which he proudly displayed for all to see. “It’s among my treasured souvenirs,” he said.

Long before the commencement of operations Alpart had set about establishing a community relations programme in the spirit and tradition maintained by all the bauxite industry companies on the island. The company restarted an Awards of Merit academic recognition programme for outstanding primary school students, which gave an early start for many outstanding Jamaicans who went on to play leadership roles over the years in medicine, engineering, education, religion, agriculture, politics, law, and bauxite industry management.

Alpart Farms distinguished itself as an important contributor to agriculture. More than half of the company’s 26,000 acres was leased to 1,100 small farmers assisted by an Alpart extension service. The livestock farm accommodated up to 2,500 head of cattle with an annual production of 750,000 lb of beef. Alpart Farms was also the perennial champion livestock exhibitor at the Denbigh agricultural show during this period.

In 1975 the company, in partnership with the Government, removed the dangerous and infamous “Man Bump” hill on the Spur Tree road and completed a brand new highway standard road “replacing the steep inclines and curves that had been a nightmare to motorists for decades”.

Motorists will once again be missing the view of the lights of Alpart seen from the Spur Tree Hill at night. The lights are now dimmed, but are a reflection of a city humming with production and making a powerful contribution to Jamaica’s economy.

An Alpart loss must be a Jamaican loss. There is going to be a huge hole in the budget to be filled. Government has lowered its growth target for this fiscal year to 0.7 per cent, down from the 1.5 per cent estimated in February, according to Jamaica Observer’s Caribbean Business Report of September 27, 2019 quoting a Government fiscal policy paper:

“This moderated growth projection for 2019/2020, which is detailed in the Government’s just-tabled revised fiscal policy paper, is due mainly to the announced closure of the alumina plant, Alpart, to facilitate an upgrade of the facility.”

So who, or what, is going to fill the hole in the budget? The bauxite industry is a Jamaican industry, as much as the sugar industry (ailing), the citrus industry, the tourist industry. In earlier days it was perceived as a multinational industry managed chiefly by expatriates. That’s not the case today, as Jamaicans are in senior management positions and make up near 100 per cent of the employee base.

With such a record of national service it seems unworthy to attempt to disparage the industry as detrimental to the extent where one armchair researcher in an article in the Jamaica Observer, on October 22, refers to mining as “unfriendly, ugly, kills flora and fauna, and us eventually”. That article goes on to name bauxite as the most abundant neurotoxic metal on Earth, although strictly speaking bauxite is not a metal, but a raw material sedimentary rock ore found all over Jamaica.

True, it is the raw material for aluminium, a metal charged with several health ailments, yet is one of the most common substances used in our daily lives (from metals to household items, cooking material, ceramics, vaccines, medications, paint, light bulbs, colouring agents, you name it).

Some say it can cause Alzheimer’s and even cancer, but the jury is still out and research always comes to mixed conclusions on this subject. Even our armchair researcher, who is also a well-respected educator and sociologist, acknowledges that he has only a suspicion about any Alzheimer’s connection.

One wonders why God would have gifted Jamaica with such a soil cover over 90 per cent of the island. By now, if armchair researcher is right, half of Jamaica and 100 per cent of our bauxite workers should be in wheelchairs. That’s eminently not the case.

I recall a story told to me some years ago by two elderly ladies from St Ann who say that when Kaiser bought their land and resettled them in Clarendon they took sick whenever they drank the water, and felt better only when they went back home to collect bauxite to line their water pitchers. This practice of drinking water from a bauxite-coated jar has been collaborated by several elders from bauxite districts in south St Elizabeth and sections of the dry harbour mining areas in St Ann. Perhaps a case for some folk medicine research in them thar hills.

Lance Neita is a bauxite industry veteran and author of the book In Partnership With Jamaica, the story of Kaiser Aluminum’s 50-year partnership with Jamaica. Send comments to the Observer or lanceneita@hotmail.com.