Below are excerpts from interviews conducted by Dickinson students while on Montserrat. In order to keep the confidentiality of our interviewees all names have been omitted.
Interview 1, Male
“For the future for Montserrat, uh, well, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. We, [door closes] our biggest weakness, I think, is that we do not have a productive economic base and that is a very big hurdle that we need to overcome we need some activity to generate wealth on island. We cannot continue to survive and to maintain a good standard of living dependent, depending on aid [unable to distinguish]. So, if we succeed I think, I, I’ve heard talk of the possibility of a, uh, a, the generation of power, using geothermal energy if that turns out to be a workable reality it could be the economic salvation of Montserrat. Because if we had the potential to export cheap electricity to neighboring islands that would generate significant uh, wealth, and, and just hoping that that turns out to be that, that it works. That, that does come on stream. If that happens we’ll be better on our way.”
Interview 2, Female
“We do not have any factories here and most of the time I would tell people, you know, the government spends money on our own, send them overseas to study, and they come back intellects. The only thing we export here are the intellects. There is no work here. And we need factories. If we don’t have factories, we don’t have anything to keep the people here. Most of our doctors-our head doctor- there isn’t enough work here. So all the intellects, their off. The government pays for them to study and then they make a u-turn and go on work elsewhere. So I hope that, you know, we get some factories and some other industries here so we get work so we can keep our young people. Every year, there is about a hundred students leave school and I mean if you can have about a hundred students leave school and you don’t have factories. We have a lot, a lot of land over in the north and they can open up a lot, a lot of industry sites over there. What they can make…what we can have here: we can have jean pant factories, we can have panty factories, we can have factories where you make sheets, bed sheets, you know we can have factories that make cover chair seats. There is a lot of things that can be done here.”
Interview 3, Male
“Well, livelihoods as I mentioned earlier because um, some of the jobs that a lot of people, um, were doing, some of them have being cut off or, um, ended basically. Um, the level of, of agriculture that we had it’s clearly not evident on this side because the, the lands are different. They are less fertile. It could have been that because of the closeness of the volcano the area we used to live, you know, it was very fertile and it was once considered the bread basket of the island in terms of agricultural production. Um, over of this side you have, um, less agricultural production. You will find most of our agriculture, agricultural products are imported. You know and hence that has, um, caused increases in prices and so on you know, which is not really what we want. You know, and a lot of people are suffering because of that and the government is working, trying to rectify that situation. So I would say livelihood that has been affected. Um, we used to have a lot of stores and so on the other side that people used to work in and so on. Now they have to try and find alternative jobs and so on and I mean, I’m not, I’m not sure what some of the wages are like you know, in terms of the other jobs that, that these people are doing now you know, but that in itself you know, is something that suffered as well.”
Interview 4, Female
“Of course, of course. Um, if you notice that the business places are far apart, they’re widespread. We used to have all capital in Plymouth and I’m sure while you’re here you’ve heard of, um, plans to build a town center. You know, um, the problem that we face now is the business people, the business community in Montserrat, they have reestablished themselves, they have erected their, their businesses in different locations. So now when you now look at a town center, I think you, you will find that you will have foreign investors coming into set up, um, businesses in this town center because most of these people, the business community are already established where they are and it will be additional cost to move into that town center or to rebuild in that town center. So the (incomprehensible word) is now on the government to try and work something out with this business community to see what can be done because what you will find is that you will have a town center and there will be no, no local investment in this town center. So I think it’s a job for the government to um, to sort out what they’re actually doing and what they want. So that’s the situation that we find ourselves in.”
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