 The Hollywood community in the Roseau Valley has demonstrated its resilience and potential for economic survival. On location today, Primus Hutchinson visits the community to explore the relationship between a locally based company with traditional links to Hollywood and residents of that community. The name Hollywood is synonymous with movie stars, glamour and excitement. The Hollywood in the Roseau Valley, however, is the extreme opposite of all the superlatives associated with the movie industry. On location today, let's discover whether this colonial tradition, which created much excitement in the community, continues to influence the livelihood of Hollywood. Good morning. We are GIS and we are here to do a special production on St. Michelistino's. Welcome, we're pleased to have you. I'm Margaret Montplaisie, human resource director and we have Angus Benjamin, our history manager here to take you on a tour today. So let's proceed, by all means. This is our propagation tank where we add yeast to the molasses in order to make our room. Now this is a very concentrated mixed hair where we start and from here it is pumped into our fermenting tank. We go first into our mother tank, from the mother tank, we then fill the other tank. If you put your hands over, you feel the heat. The St. Lucia distillers has been around long enough to be accepted as an institution in the Hollywood community. Many of Hollywood's elderly, underleaving either by working on the cane plantation in the 1950s and 60s or inside the now-defunct cane factory, performing minor tasks which all led to the manufacturing of local white rum from the molasses extract. At present, the new St. Lucia distillers has taken over the production process. The St. Lucia distillers goes back a long long way and I'm sure you've heard that it's to do with the Barnard family, a local St. Lucia family. They merged and actually set up hair in the 1960s. Mr. Barnard will give you the exact date, time, year and everything. So it's been around a long time. Possibly our most famous product is Bounty rum, which more than likely you have drank. But we do make a lot of other things. We're also very well known for our liqueurs and our most popular liqueur right now is nuts and rum, which is a peanut punch. And that we're doing very well with, especially in the export market. We are one of the few islands that actually can take the molasses ship right there at the bay. So we don't have to truck it. We can pump it straight up. And what happens is that that is a pump house. So it brings in the molasses and it pumps it up to our tank for us. And we've been using that again for very many years. Angus Benjamin, a resident of Hollywood, has been with St. Lucia Distillers for 21 years, having started in 1978 as a floor sweeper, then moving up the ranks to assistant manager. As I said, I'm from there and there are quite a few people from the Hollywood area who has worked here before and are presently working there. Alvin Francis is another Hollywood youth who started with the company in 1987, also as a floor worker. He, like Angus, has walked his way up the ranks to become a supervisor. Whatever I was asked to do, I do. I always don't work on time, you know, and stuff like that. Always do my work the way that I'm supposed to be done. Alvin is also the chairman of the Rosa Hollywood Development Committee. He laments the long neglected years of the community, but remains optimistic. Last year, we renovated some two sets of houses there, which was badly licking, which have all people living in. We renovated two of them. Right now, we are in the process of building the drains and we have some other stuff coming up. The people now have seen that the development is doing something now, you know, and now they're trying to get into it, because it's a group of young of us, given that Rosa have probably around 300 people and just 10 of us in a development committee. It's very hard. Saint Lucia Distillers has come a long way from the 1960s to its present status, producers of a wide range of spirits. But why isn't there more Hollywood residents employed with the company? The Rosa self, Hollywood, you don't get the quality that the company is looking for from Rosa, but they do get some people, you know, because it comes to the educational backgrounds and so on, you know, they've not really been to University, some of them. We have some people from Rosa who have been to University, but it's not what the company is looking for. They don't really have these kind of people from the Rosa community. Housing and unemployment are two critical concerns of residents in Hollywood, Rosa. Government too is expressing concern for the social and economic conditions of the area. The Saint Lucia Distillers have been helping Rosa in a few little ways, but I think there is still much room for improvement. There is quite a lot to be done in Rosa, and we need the help or we need the assistance of the Saint Lucia Distillers and not there alone, but also from the private sector, right, and all the charitable organizations. Saint Lucia Distillers has embarked on a tourism drive, which provides an insight into the historical developments surrounding the company. They are also planning to implement an arts and crafts project involving the older structures in the compound. They should give the Hollywood community a much needed boost. What we're trying to show them is that we have a history of cane and and rum making going way back ourselves. It's doing very well. I think this year we will do about 10,000 tourists through here, so very encouraging indeed, and that is only the start of what we think we can do in this area. In other words, to have arts and crafts people in there actually making the straw work and anything that can make an interesting tour or part of the tour. And we're hoping that the community will do that, not us, and that is the idea. So if we need a blacksmith's shop to show the old days, we'll put that in and so on, and revive all of those buildings as they were. That's the idea, to try and bring it back as close to 18th century as we can. I would be happy if the people of the community could come forward and then so that the company could help them to develop them, education and so on, because these are the people from the community themselves. They have to be educated. You know, they need education for them to go along with the times. And in this plan, Roso stands to benefit from that housing plan, because already the government has identified something like 40 acres of land at Masque for housing, for low income people. Houses are affordable and I believe this program is very good, especially as the people of Roso will benefit from the national housing program. I think the community needs some more improvement from the St. Lucia Distillery Limited, which is the main company in St. Lucia and which they don't have no other company or no other factory in St. Lucia that does make alcohol and they are the only company in St. Lucia that does make alcohol and it is in Roso in the Old Sugarcane Mill. The fact that Angus and Alvin were able to overcome the impoverished and social conditions of the Hollywood community is a strong indication of the potential that exists in the community waiting to be explored. Perhaps you and I can do something about it. Why not come on location sometime and explore the possibility of working with the Hollywood community in helping to realize the dreams, visions and aspirations.