Ghost town at White River
Unlicensed raft operators leave, as ordered
OCHO RIOS, St Ann — The usual hustle and bustle on the stretch of road near White River, in this resort town, has been replaced by long periods of eerie silence.
During a visit on Monday, the group of men who usually greet visitors, excitedly telling them about raft tours and other offerings at the attraction, were nowhere in sight.
As ordered by Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo), they have pulled up stumps and left. A few gaily coloured rafts were still on the water but there was no music bellowing from them, no sound of laughter and good vibes flowing up and down the stream with the bamboo vessels.
One raft operator was seen with his head hung low, watching a video on his phone. On a typical Monday he would have been pushing his raft up and down the river, earning money to care for his daughter.
“Right now my child mother don’t even want me to talk to her because I don’t have any money to send. When things were good I could even make a US$100 and give her for the week, but the thing slow down real bad right now. I don’t have anything else to do, really; I try to go even to MoBay or so to do rafting but it’s not working out. I had to sell the raft, I had to get some money — and all now the man still don’t pay me for it yet,” raft captain Denton Kington told the Jamaica Observer.
He and others were served with notice on February 7, advising them to leave the area by February 13 and look for jobs with other licensed proprietors in the area.
It has been almost a week and things are not looking good for Kington.
“Me can’t make no money so I don’t know how I’m gonna survive. We born come see our people a do it and it is the only thing we know, and we never really make any preparation to do anything else,” he said.
His peer, who gave his name as Trace, also expressed uncertainty about his next move.
“We can’t take care of our family or nothing because all of this is down and there is nothing for us to do right now. Me just a hope that the authorities do something to change what is going on right now because we need some help and we are not gonna do anything illegal right now,” he said.
“The rafting was helping to keep a lot of youths off the street and stuff like that so they need to look deeper into what is going on,” he urged.
During a meeting on February 7, TPDCo Ocho Rios visitor, safety and experience coordinator Oneil Fitten had told rafters that only licensed entities are permitted to offer services on the river, and only one entity had been properly licensed at that point.
Fitten also stated that one of the major reasons they were forced to close the popular spot was the mounting complaints about incidents at the location that have left people feeing unsafe. The raft operators insist that those problems are caused by outsiders who invaded the space, not them.
The impact of the facility’s closure has spread far beyond the men who glide along the water with visitors on their rafts. Alfonso Armstrong, who washes cars in the area, told the Observer that he has seen a significant decline in business.
“Everywhere mash up. The people who usually come would sometime ask us to wash their car but because the raft men not here, we’re not getting any business either. I don’t get one car to wash since the rafter them gone — it rough on us,” he said.
