Plan for life after bauxite – Witter

State Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining, Franklin Witter, is urging stakeholders in the mining sector to begin now to plan for a future beyond bauxite.

"We know that bauxite is a diminishing asset, with mining in Jamaica having just another 30 to 40 years to go. We must now look at life after bauxite and we must now turn to a product like limestone, which occupies 70 per cent of Jamaica's land space," he said.

Witter was addressing a meeting of the Bauxite Subcommittee of the Manchester Parish Development Committee (MPDC) held last Friday at the Tropics View Hotel in Mandeville, Manchester.

He said there is an opportunity to leverage the link between farming and mining to address some of the challenges affecting the agriculture sector, including access to land and water. He noted, for example, that stakeholders can work together to provide mined-out spaces for water harvesting to support agriculture. Witter said that the matter of reclamation of mined-out lands has been a sore point over the years.

MPDC Chairman, Anthony Freckleton, highlighted the need to urgently address the matter of outstanding titles for residents who had sold lands to bauxite companies from as far back as 2002. Principal Director Mining/Minerals Policy and Development, Dr Oral Rainford, said the ministry is working to speed up the pace of distribution of land titles.

"If, on average, we are producing 350 to 400 titles per year, over the last 15 years, we have another 10 years before the process is complete," he said, admitting that the process has been moving slowly, lamenting that there are persons who have been waiting as many as 20 years for their title.

Rainford said that one reason for the delays is that some people die intestate [without having a will] but noted that the division is working through these issues in collaboration with the National Land Agency, Commissioner of Lands, the Jamaica Bauxite Institute and the director in the ministry with responsibility for titles.