By Gerald Miller, Freelance WriterWESTMORELAND:
RESIDENTS OF Roaring River, a small community adjacent to Petersfield in Westmoreland, are attributing a downturn in the number of visitors to their community on the state of the pothole-riddled road leading to their tourist attractions.
The community has a large cave which is maintained by the Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo), in conjunction with the Roaring River Citizens' Association.
However, with the road conditions having deteriorated, tour operators have reduced the number of trips to the community.
According to the residents, as early as 1999, then Minister of Tourism, Francis Tulloch, at a meeting in the community had promised to get the road resurfaced but nothing has happened since then.
"For a couple years the Minister (Tulloch) promised to fix the road and up to now, no one has turned up and the most problem we have now is that the guy with the transport is afraid to come to Roaring River. The result? We not getting any business (visitors). Right now it's Spring Break start and we are not getting any business," said Solomon Vassel, a resident and member of the Roaring River Citizens' Association.
The state of the road is also posing a challenge to residents who want to leave the community in an emergency because taxi operators are reluctant to drive their vehicles there.
"If people are sick, once it is later than midnight, they have to pay $3,000 to be taken to the hospital in Savanna-la-Mar," Elmira Turner, a guard at the attraction said. On October 15, 1999 at a meeting in the community, Francis Tulloch had given the residents the assurance that he was committed to using Roaring River as pilot project for community tourism.
"We are committed to the use of Roaring River as a pilot project for community tourism. If this community project does not work here in Roaring River it will not work anywhere else. The community is small enough, the attractions are beautiful, all you have to do is to co-operate and make it work," Tulloch said then. The residents have appealed to their Member of Parliament, Dr Karl Blythe, to address the problem.
