Geof Brown

It had been some four years since I last visited Turks and Caicos, or to be more precise the island of Providenciales, one of the islands composing the country. The transformation was absolutely amazing. Where there had been almost trackless waste of the nearest thing to a sandy desert in the Caribbean, highways and feeder roads had materialised as if by magic. Seven-storey buildings (restricted to that height by environmentally sensitive law) were now dotting the landscape; luxurious homes now compete with one another for being showpieces. There is now a flurry of building activity with the necks of cranes like a flood of giraffes everywhere the eye turns. But what is even more striking is that the pristine clean 16-mile beach remains as crystal clear as years before.

So clearly the latter is not an accident. In short, it is possible to have massive development, yet not at the expense of the environment. Turks and Caicos is setting an example for Jamaica in the nature of development of Providenciales (called "Provo" by the locals). On my previous visit, I had been impressed that the Turks and Caicos government had put in place an Authority to protect the incredibly beautiful 16-mile beach on Provo as well as to maintain a marine park. In a no-nonsense approach to environmental protection, I noted at the time that unlike in Jamaica, the Provo authorities gave no let to anyone, no matter how important, to violate their environmental restrictions. Come back home to Jamaica, land we love, and note what we have been doing to our best beaches, to Kingston harbour and to Dunn's River (See column, "We ought to be Ashamed', August 4.)

Provo does not have mineral wealth or any kind of natural resources except for its sand, sea and sun. There is no interior to explore as in our case. What it does have is a virtually non-existent crime rate and this largely accounts for the flocking of foreigners to invest in its development and to build retirement homes by the dozens. It has turned its tourism product into a lifeline in no uncertain terms. It was the Sandals and Beaches hotel chain which became the catalyst for the development take-off. I was told that in the earlier years, on a given week, up to 70 per cent of visitors arriving were headed for the Beaches Turks Hotel. It is perhaps no surprise that the recent World Tourism Awards were hosted on Provo and in fact at the pioneering Beaches hotel which is now poised to do a US$100-million expansion that will make Disney World take notice.

The lesson for us in Jamaica is that with our tourism product potential, that with not just one large hotel chain as catalyst, but with several such, we could be busting out all over with development through foreign direct investment - but with the environment fully protected. The lesson does not stop there, however. Provo, a little spit of once barren land that could geographically be swallowed up in Kingston, is on present indications, bidding fair to become a Singapore with its per capita income way ahead of Jamaica's. (Incidentally, the Jamaican workers there are loath to return to Jamdown because of the high salaries they enjoy with no income tax.) And why do I make this assertion? Because Turks and Caicos has established a reputation for killing bureaucracy.

I talked with business people and representatives of big developers who sing the praises of the government for its prompt response to proposals for investment. Government decisions are made with alacrity as if the country's life depends on it, which in fact it does. So does the life of Jamaica, but you would never know it by the way in which our bureaucracy ties up would-be investors into knots.
Instead of making the path easy as in Turks and Caicos, we seem to take pride in the multiplicity of forms to be filled and multiple ministries to check and cross check and cross duplicate one another. As an example, I heard in a discussion on a radio talk show this week, a JAMPRO official admitting that the variety of forms to be filled out by a potential investor can be "bewildering".
Ye gods! How can we blithely admit that we "bewilder" a potential investor? Worse, believe it or not, the same official apparently took comfort in the fact that people are actually made available to assist the potential investor through the "bewildering" maze! That is like saying: "I am going to spread dung all over the path you will have to walk, but don't worry, I will provide some people to help clean the way for you." We use one set of people to complicate the process, then use another set to help uncomplicate it. Good Lord, if that is not Alice in Wonderland stuff I don't know what is. Why not just simplify the process in the first place?

I believe that if Turks and Caicos with not an iota of natural advantage can, so can we.

browngeof@hotmail.com

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