To the editor:
Last Sunday night’s “60 Minutes” program on CBS reported on a county in Mississippi who had lost all of its textile industry, including the loss of 2,400 jobs when the Sera Lee Co. closed its operation.
This report reminded me of Scotland County and our struggle to recover from the many jobs we lost since early 2000. When Eaton, Ingram and Ray Magnum Wire and Abbott Laboratories, a major employer with over 1,000 good paying jobs left in 2001, the county hit rock bottom and never recovered.
I spoke with one county commissioners, asking why we can’t attract new business? I was told we do not have a qualified workforce to offer and we no longer look for businesses to come to Scotland County. I have seen similar comments made by other community leaders in The Laurinburg Exchange. The general attitude here is, Scotland County is kept afloat with welfare money, and we no longer look for business to come to our area. The best we can hope for is to become a retirement community. So based on this, our goals are set very low for us and upcoming generations and we should not expect much more.
What sets us aside from the county in Mississippi is, that their leaders were not satisfied with loosing all of the jobs and the unemployment it created. It took only one industrious person who by his leadership completely turned that county around. Low paying jobs were replaced with high paying jobs three times greater then what people earned before. One of the most modern steel mills, a helicopter company, building helicopters for the military and a plant manufacturing engines located in that county. People who had limited skills were retrained and now operate high tech equipment. Don’t we have a technical college in our area who could provide retraining a more highly skilled workforce? Yes it took hard work and ingenuity, but it proves it can be done. The CBS report clearly shows, a county can recover from adversity, but it takes leaders who set high goals for their community and pursue them without excepting defeat.
Horst Hanak
Laurinburg,