THIS DAY IN OUR PAST
The following events took place on October 22 in the years identified:
1975: The Kingston transshipment port gets another boost with the announcement that Zim Israeli Navigation Company, one of the world’s major container carriers, will begin regular use of the local transshipment facilities in early 1976. The announcement is made by Eric Bell, minister of public utilities and transport, at the Norman Manley Airport on his return from Miami, Florida, where he had attended the fifth annual general meeting of the Caribbean Shipping Association. Zim lines started using local shipping facilities in 1972 in anticipation of the opening of the trans-shipment port, but pulled out a year later because of reported difficulties in getting pilots to handle their vessels.
1986: A transport council of Jamaica is launched and one of its first acts is to call on the Government to cease the importation of buses after current negotiation for additional rolling stock. It wants, instead, to assemble the units in Jamaica. The council also announces that it will immediately embark on the preparation of a fiveyear master plan for public transportation in the Corporate Area. The council’s spokesperson, Gloria Jack, presides at the meeting held at Hotel Four Seasons in Kingston. In her inaugural address, she says the savings in foreign exchange from the discontinuation of the importation of buses will be about half the present expenditure on rolling stock imports.
1986:Minister of Public Utilities and Transport Pearnel Charles says Jamaican ports now handle over 800 container ships and about 120,000 containers yearly, earning an annual income of over J$300 million. As a result, the shipping industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors in Jamaica, while the Kingston trans-shipment port is becoming one of the top ones in the world. It is now the gateway to the North, Central and South Americas, he says. Charles states this at a luncheon which he holds for a 15-member team from the port of Gothenburg, Sweden, at the Terra Nova Hotel in Kingston.