OCHO RIOS, St Ann President of the St Ann Chamber of Commerce Horace Wildes, has said that the four-day civil unrest in sections of the Corporate Area and St Catherine last week was felt 50 miles away here in this North Coast town and other parts of the parish, resulting in a slowdown of business.

Wildes said that some businesses are yet to pick up and that many remain in what he called a "watch-and -see-mode" as there was still uncertainty surrounding the full operation of the business community in Kingston, where many enterprises and head offices are located.

"Most head offices are based in Kingston and, for example with banking, I know quite a number of institutions operated on reduced hours and there were functions that we had planned for different issues that had to be postponed," Wildes said, adding that new resources will now have to be found to reschedule several of these events.

"At the Chamber we should have had a meeting to discuss the ideal cruise shipping industry and that had to be postponed because some of the ministers and stakeholders who would normally be at these functions were not able to make it."

He said that goods and services, which are usually transported from Kingston and St Catherine daily to different businesses across the parish, were also put on hold as some operators were fearful that the violence would have escalated and resulted in theft, damage to property or loss of lives.

"Historically, when things like this happen, persons recognise that there are usually robberies, and I guess from those lessons persons would prefer not to put out their motor vehicles because they would be in danger of theft or vandalism. Most businesses prefer to lose a week's sale rather than their capital output," Wildes said.

He said that the civil unrest, which has so far claimed 76 lives, had also impacted negatively on the tourism industry.

Wildes said that several visitors who had scheduled arrivals to the island last week could not fulfil those commitments because of the unrest and the publicity that the events received in the international media.

"I know quite a number of persons who could have come from overseas had to cancel their flights, so the hotels that would benefit didn't benefit, because of what was happening."

Wildes said that he was concerned about the impact that the current situation and the continued state of emergency in sections of Kingston and St Andrew will have on the economy and businesses in the resort town.

He said that the present situation would create new challenges for businesses which he said were trying to recover from the recession. He said that if the situation in Kingston worsened, future employment may be threatened as the area was still not seeing a comfortable level of job creation resulting from the recession.

"The challenge is there, because these persons are now trying to relook at their alternative employment and, again, some of the resources which normally come from Kingston, in terms of helping to do business plans and for people who want to register their company, even though we can do it here in St Ann, but these are some factors that would more or less cause people to have things in a wait and see mode," Wildes told the Observer.

At the same time, small business operators as well as food establishments, including supermarkets and wholesales that get their goods directly from Kingston, were also affected. Several food items, mainly baked products supplied to outlets here from bakeries in Kingston, were missing from supermarket shelves for many days.

Merchandisers and sales representatives, while they could not speak officially for their suppliers or companies, said that they were severely hampered because delivery trucks were not dispatched from Kingston for several days.

However, probably the worst affected were operators of coaster and minibuses that transport hundreds of people daily, mainly from Ocho Rios and Brown's Town into Kingston. Some operators said that while they were willing to risk a trip or two into parts of Kingston, there were no passengers.

"We lost thousands a dollars, the passengers were scared, the buses came out and some of us were willing to take in passengers but with businesses closed for days, especially Monday and Thursday, wholesale days in town, we couldn't go in, we didn't have anybody to carry a town," one coaster bus operator told the Observer.

He said that vendors who travel to Ocho Rios, Brown's Town and other parts of the parish to sell dry goods, including clothing and food supplies, were not able to do so. He said that many of the vendors live in areas of Kingston which were affected by the unrest.

"We want this thing to be over soon; it's affecting too many people," he said.