Who is minding the miners of Jamaica's 'gold'?

Dear Editor;

After building the pier at Falmouth there is now talk again of building a cruise shipping pier at Port Royal. It seems that the pundits are correct, we develop for the sake of our politicians and bureaucrats and not for our people.

Let me explain. Kingston harbour is a wonderful natural resource. It is a site that could be developed with a vision of creating opportunities for us as a people rather for a cruise ship entrepreneur. The bottom line is that we need to understand cultural resource management.

What do we have surrounding Kingston Harbour? We have the three main settlements: Spanish Town, founded circa 1549; Port Royal, founded c 1656; and Kingston, founded c 1692. Where else can sites such as these be found gathered around a harbour? Our Kingston harbour is the centre of our ‘Historic Triangle’.

When people plan to come off a cruise ship, they book tours or disembark to walk the streets to see and to mingle with our people. What if we were able to use the money that we would spend on pier to restore our heritage, our historic sites, our markets, our theatres, our parks and museums, our forts and mineral baths and, of course, the docks so that tenders carrying passengers can disembark at Rockfort, Victoria Pier, Port Henderson, and yes, Port Royal, even Lime Cay.

Employment opportunities

Tendering would create investment and employment opportunities. We have the trained personnel at the Caribbean Maritime Training Institute to man these facilities. Restoring these small docks to receive tenders would increase the demand for other uses of our harbour. It would encourage all sorts of recreational activities. We are the only people living on the shores of such a harbour that do not have the facilities being created so that we can use the harbour.

Tenders arriving at the Rockfort Mineral baths and the Rockfort pier would generate business. Tenders arriving at the Victoria Pier would encourage shopping bars, restaurants and even visits to what many tourists enjoy, visiting the markets, such as the Craft Market and even Coronation market, and why not? Are we afraid to send tourists there?

Tenders arriving at Port Henderson could have passengers visiting a revived Mineral Bath, shops, restaurants and bars, take tours to Spanish Town and even visits to the Bernard Lodge sugar factory. All this would be in keeping with spreading out the benefits of the vast range of cultural resources that we have inherited.

Tours

There are the tenders that can dock at Port Royal for walking tours of his old town – the place where the British Empire began to rise and the Spanish Empire began to recede.

It’s history was much more than that commonly relegated as the wickedest city after only a decade of buccaneering.

So why build a cruise ship pier in Port Royal? To isolate our tourists from us, the people, to spend our money to create opportunities for others, rather than us? To risk damage to the Sunken City which by itself can realise another million visitors a year if managed correctly? Let us arrange to anchor the cruise ships
in the harbour and take the passengers off by tenders; use the monies to fix our docks and cultural resources to the standard required for both ourselves and our visitors.

Cultural resource management is what heritage tourism is all about. We have to begin to learn to implement this now otherwise the damage we do will be irreparable. Our people will continue to be ignorant of our history, the legacy from our forbears, and not be able to reap any of these benefits.

Culturally speaking,

AINSLEY HENRIQUES

ainsley@cwjamaica.com

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