Following is a lightly edited version of Clinton Yap's presentation to the Montego Bay Rotary Club on November 15, 2006.

I believe that by far Jamaica's "development" over the past 44 years since our Independence should give us all cause for concern. And that is what I would like to talk to you about today.
I know at this point some of you are thinking I'm crazy. After all, you live in a nice home, drive a nice car, and can come for lunch at a nice hotel like this. What's wrong with that?

Well, imagine yourselves as citizens back in 1962, and being asked to write down your vision of Jamaica as you would want it to be in the year 2006. Now let me run down a few items that I do not think would have been on your wish list. These include:

1) Jamaica becoming the country with the highest murder rate in the world, and where everyone, from the poorest to the wealthiest, live behind iron bars.

2) Every city and town without exception, having increasingly worse traffic congestion, and in a degraded, dirty and unsightly condition.

3)Thousands of extremely poor and destitute citizens, living in sub-human conditions, with many in garrison communities in our urban centres, where they fight and kill each other to support their political patrons.

4) All public services and facilities for things such as health, education, policing, fire fighting and justice in deplorable condition and starved of funding.

5) The vast majority of tourists coming to the island are secluded in all-inclusive hotels, and discouraged from going out to public places unless through guided tours.

6) Widespread depletion of our agricultural lands and open spaces to accommodate housing sprawl, as well as environmental degradation affecting our mountains, watersheds, rivers, and beaches.

And the list could go on, but I believe you get the idea. This is where we are today, after all the time and effort, and after all the money spent and debt incurred.

I have referred to these things not to depress you or to dwell on negativity, but to make the point that political promises and massive government spending have not and will not translate into a Jamaica that we can be happy or proud about, if we keep doing the same wrong things in the same wrong way. And the result will be the same whether it is administered under the PNP or under the JLP.

In Jamaica, we have tended to view our problems in isolation and to try to address them as individual issues. However, I believe that most, if not all, of the problems in the country including what I have outlined are inter-related and that at the core, there are two main factors that have been the greatest contributors to where Jamaica is today.

One is the lack of proper long-term integrated planning and urban design at the community, town/city and national level. The other significant factor is the unconscionable waste of public resources through governmental mismanagement and corruption that have become commonplace, particularly in public sector-led construction projects.

PLANNING AND URBAN DESIGN

Simply put, if you don't know where you want or need to go, how will you know what to do to get there? It is only through the planning process that you can ensure appropriate land use throughout the island and can try to integrate all the elements that comprise a country's development.

Elements such as housing, transportation systems, parks and recreational areas, nature reserves, water supply, sewage disposal, storm water drainage, commercial and industrial facilities, etc. And it is through good urban design that you can maximise the functioning, character and quality of our towns and cities.

Tomorrow is World Town Planning Day, and I am sure that NEPA and the Ministry of Local Government and Environment will be making a big public relations splash about the importance and role of planning in Jamaica's development, and what they have been doing to direct Jamaica's growth. The sad reality is that while there are decent and capable people in the system, agencies that deal with planning issues are woefully understaffed and under-funded, as well as generally ignored and bypassed by the powerful politicians and agency heads who make all the decisions.

To compound the problem of trying to integrate planning, almost every agency and ministry is now involved in construction of some kind, and many of them are either a law to themselves, such as the UDC and the Ministry of Housing, or they act as if they are, such as the NHT and NWA.

They do not usually communicate with each other, much less with the public that they serve, and major developmental decisions are made behind closed doors and simply announced to the country as a done deal.

This ad hoc and disorderly pattern of carrying out development has been destroying the country piece by piece.
The cost to the country is not only the waste of our land and financial resources, but the harsh and derelict physical disorder that sociologists have found to contribute to breeding uncivilised behaviour as well as criminality. Most of all, there is the missed opportunity of not having well-planned and aesthetically pleasing towns and cities where our citizens want to live and where we could be attracting and accommodating tourists.

This was made even more clearly to me when I visited Spain during this past summer. Whether it was the large coastal city of Barcelona or the smaller resort city of San Sebastian, there were certain common planning features that we would do well to emulate in our Jamaican towns and cities.

First of all, people of all income groups actually live in these cities, so they don't have to clog up the streets and highways commuting to work and back. There is as much space for pedestrians to walk as there are roads for cars, and the sidewalks and plazas are full of life both from the city residents and from the thousands of tourists shopping and going to the local restaurants.

The signature features of these coastal towns are the large public promenades that wrap around their waterfront and beaches, with shops, restaurants, and attractions fronting on to them. Contrast this with the unkempt condition and unsightliness of Montego Bay's downtown waterfront, where the feature buildings are a monstrous tax office and a shopping mall where the parking lot has the best views of the waterfront. What a waste!

The planning lessons from Spain don't just stop there. When you leave the cities, you know you have left, because they do not approve of sprawling construction all over their countryside, and you can enjoy the vistas of beautiful green open spaces and fully functioning farmland.

What I have described is not just a characteristic of a typical European country because of its history and culture. It is what is being prescribed by the leading city planners all over the world today. We the people need to demand that our governments take us in this direction.

PUBLIC SECTOR CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS

Let's start with the obvious which I think more and more people including the media are starting to get, which is that the chronic cost over-runs on public sector construction projects have resulted in increased taxes, record public debt, and the inability of government to find the resources to adequately pay teachers, police and nurses, for example, or to maintain at the most basic level our hospitals, police stations, schools, fire stations, among others.

What is not so obvious, but it is a fact, is that the high level of taxes has been an impediment to business expansion as well as a burden to workers.

Also, the insatiable need for government borrowing has kept interest rates very high for many years, and even now we are asked to be happy that commercial loans have trended down to a little over 20 per cent! And we wonder why small businesses, manufacturing and agriculture have not been able to thrive and create employment.

What I have just tried to outline for you is the correlation between the general problems in the country, and the wasting of public resources through mismanagement and corruption in public sector projects. It should therefore be clear that it is only when we can significantly reduce this abuse of public resources that we can begin to reverse these negative trends and begin to move the country forward.

In this regard, there have been several calls, including from the opposition leader, for the tightening up of the contract award process and giving more resources to the Contractor General's office.

The poor Contractor General, he and his staff are trying their best, but there are so many ways to circumvent a contract award process, that they really have their hands full. Examples:

a) Saying that the funding is coming from a donor country at concessionary rates and that we have to use their designers/engineers/ contractors, when in fact, interest costs can be built into the contract sum, which in itself can be substantially inflated, and at the end of the day we still have to pay;

b) Setting standards for a construction project that are more suited to an individual company's building system or setting qualifying standards that favour an individual company; and

c) Going out to tender with one set of guidelines and specifications and then after the contract is awarded to whom it was intended for in the first place, completely changing them, so that the contractor/developer can renegotiate and also claim for variations and extension of time.

In my opinion, any realistic effort to curb corruption has to start long before a project reaches the contract award stage. The first place that you have to start is by minimising the opportunities for corruption to take place. This is why I have for years maintained that ministries and agencies should stick to the core functions that a government is expected to deal with, such as health, education, security and justice, planning and environmental protection.

They should not be doing projects like Sandals Whitehouse or Harmony Cove. The government should also not be pursuing middle income and upscale housing projects as they are actively doing, or projects such as the gated luxury retirement community that the NHT wants to build in Montego Bay. These are all projects that the private sector should be doing, and the government's insistence on pursuing them is either very stupid and short-sighted or a deliberate attempt to perpetuate the practice of corruptly distributing the country's very scarce resources.

The other point that I would like to make on ways to minimise corruption is that we need to put an end to the practice of decisions being made in secrecy on the implementing of major public sector development projects.

The country only hears about them after contract arrangements have been privately worked out and are far advanced, so that we don't get to have a say in whether or not a project should be a priority for the use of our resources. This is a significant facilitator of corruption and a practice that also needs to be discontinued.

I have now covered the main issues that I wanted to highlight to you about the importance of good planning and urban design, as well as some suggestions on minimising public sector corruption in construction, both of which I maintain are the core causes of most of Jamaica's many problems.

With your indulgence I would just like to spend a few minutes more to briefly touch on some of the current high-profile projects, and to point out what I consider to be doing the wrong things in the wrong way.

FALMOUTH GREENFIELD STADIUM/SABINA PARK

Whether or not you are a cricket fan, you have to wonder at the justification for spending over US$110 million to get back a little over US$9.5 million. I believe those were the figures, if my memory serves me right.

The government has used the rationale about the invaluable worldwide "exposure" and the "legacy" benefits that the country will get. Well, the last time I looked, I would not want downtown Kingston or nearby Spanish Town exposed to the world. Nor would I want them to see how successive governments have allowed a national treasure like Falmouth to deteriorate so badly. And just look at Montego Bay.

If the government had the country's interest at heart, and has the money to spend, for starters they could have done something to upgrade some of the inner cities and main streets of Kingston and provided more resources to the cash-starved Jamaica National Heritage Trust and the people of Falmouth to transform that town into the mega tourism attraction for which it has the potential. It is then that you could boast about "legacy" benefits.

Instead, we have two huge facilities that, as nice as they may be, are more likely to end up as millstones around the necks of taxpayers who have to foot the annual maintenance bills.

HARMONY COVE

The high risk nature of resort hotel developments should be obvious. Numerous privately owned hotels had to be salvaged by the government in the 1970s, and ended up being managed and divested in the 1980s through the National Hotels and Properties.

These included the Royal Caribbean, Negril Beach Village, Montego Beach, and Trelawny Beach. The failures of more recent vintage under this political administration ended up again in government's hands, and all have been literally given away. These include Plantation Inn, Ciboney, Braco Village, Boscobel Beach, and Mr Seaga's Enchanted Gardens, to name a few.

With so many foreign investors seeking to invest in tourism in Jamaica, why do we need government agencies to spend and put at risk billions of dollars of taxpayers' money? We all know how well government projects and joint ventures are run in the public's interest.

I maintain that if the government's priority is to promote tourism and investments in general, the best way is to put resources and attention into taking care of core issues which would make the country more attractive and conducive to investments.

HIGHWAY 2000

As some of you may be aware, this is a project that I have been concerned about from the beginning. Not because I am against Jamaica having an improved road network, but because I strongly believe that a project of this magnitude required an immense amount of inter agency planning and intense public consultations. Instead, it was developed and contracted in secrecy and sold to the country with a public relations campaign of lies, obfuscation and misinformation.
The issues are too vast to adequately cover with you today, so I just want to touch on a few issues of concern regarding this project.

The first misrepresentation to the public is that H2K is mainly a private sector investment.

From the very start, I have been saying that the taxpayers of Jamaica had the ultimate responsibility to service the commercial loan for Phase 1A of US$150 million taken out by Trans Jamaican Highway Ltd. TJH, is the locally registered company set up by Bouygues. The government has admitted this but said it was not a guarantee.

This is now a moot point, because in addition to the US$92 million that our government initially put up (mainly borrowed from pension funds), they have now used part of the Petro Caribe loans to pay off the TJH's US$150-million loan from RBTT. All of these loans totalling US$242 million are clearly the liability of the Jamaican taxpayers.

Keeping in mind that Bouygues had originally bid US$141 million to complete Phase 1A (the actual contract sum has never been disclosed), and have now received US$242 million, what exactly have they invested to justify having a concession to toll/tax the people of Jamaica for the next 35 years? Think about it.

Also to be noted, the government loans have been made to TJH, who in turn would have paid off their parent company Bouygues for all their expenses and profits plus an extra US$101 million for good measure. Bouygues has now said "goodbye Jamaica, until next time when you find more money", and TJH is left to tax (toll) the life out of us to recover and make a 16% return on money that they did not provide.

Any day that they are not satisfied, they can fold TJH Ltd and leave the taxpayers of Jamaica holding the bag. That is some "private sector" investment! I would love to get a deal like that!
The second misrepresentation is that Highway 2000 (as conceived and presented to the public), is necessary for Jamaica's development.

In Jamaica, we have treated the issue of transportation as if it was only about moving motor cars. While planners worldwide know that transportation is only one element in the sustainable development planning of their cities and their region. They also know that transportation considerations should include the integration of pedestrians, bicycles, rail transit, buses, air and sea transport, and motor cars.

The pressure to build more roads and highways has been exacerbated by our housing programmes and policies that have encouraged and facilitated a phenomenon called sprawl.
This is when housing developers build in rural and suburban areas where land is relatively flat and cheap. While the rationale is the provision of "affordable" housing to those in need, the fact is that these houses are heavily subsidised by our tax dollars through subsidies in land, financing and tax exemptions, as well as the provision of heavily subsidised mortgages to their purchasers, primarily from the NHT.

The fact is also that the cost to the country does not end there. We have the environmental costs of land consumption and air and noise pollution, the costs of extending utility services, and the costs of new and wider roads and highways to accommodate the increased car traffic generated as home owners commute to the urban centres. Additionally, we have the further negative impact of increased need for foreign exchange to import motor vehicles and to pay for fuel, as well as the ongoing costs of road repairs and maintenance.

A prime example of this misguided approach has been vividly illustrated in Portmore. While the earlier developers have taken their profits and moved on, decades later the citizens of that community as well as all of us continue to pay a heavy price.

A reported over US$100 million was spent to build a new causeway bridge that at best can only move cars a few minutes faster from the congestion of Portmore to the congestion of Kingston. This does not include the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent to widen the approach roads on Marcus Garvey Drive and in Portmore - all this being done in the futile attempt to ease traffic congestion.

I am reminded of a well-known saying among knowledgeable traffic planners around the world, that "trying to solve traffic congestion by increasing road capacity is like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt". It makes you feel more comfortable for a while but you are still seriously sick and are only going to get worse because you have not addressed the underlying causes.

The underlying cause of traffic congestion in Portmore, as well as in Kingston, Montego Bay, and elsewhere in Jamaica, is that issues of housing and transportation have not been looked at together and in the context of a holistic approach to planning and urban design.

Applying such an approach to the situation in Portmore, hundreds if not thousands of people of mixed income levels should be living in Downtown Kingston so that they could be closer to work and not have to commute. Correspondingly, greater effort and incentives could have been provided for businesses to set up in Portmore, so that people who live there would have opportunities for employment closer to home.

If you add to this the bringing back of the rail service from St Catherine to Kingston, there would have been no traffic congestion problem. We could have retained the original Portmore Causeway and put the over US$100 million wasted on the new toll bridge to better use by implementing this sustainable planning solution.

This would have helped immensely towards once again making Kingston the "Pearl of the Caribbean", and Portmore residents and other citizens would not have to be paying tolls to the foreign concessionaire for the next 35 years.

In closing, I read a news report last weekend that your local president of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce was expressing concern about the worsening traffic congestion in Montego Bay, and she is asking the government to do something about it.

I have no doubt that the long touted bypass road may be necessary, but I urge you to pressure your political representatives to put resources into proper planning and urban design for Montego Bay, and to look at a comprehensive approach to the city's development.

Finally, what I have tried to present to you today is a way forward out of the current state of the country and for Jamaica to reach its full potential. Although I won't be around, I sincerely hope that 44 years from now, the talk will be what a remarkable transformation Jamaica has made since 2006!
Thank you.

Clinton Yap is a past president of the Jamaican Institute of Architects and former chairman of the Construction Industry Council.

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