WESTERN BUREAU — The organisational restructuring of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry is among the challenges that the new president, Winston Dear, has set for himself during his tenure over the next year.

Dear, a 63-year-old professional land surveyor and developer, was given the nod over his only opponent, managing director of the Western Mirror Lloyd B Smith, when the votes were counted at the Chamber’s annual general meeting on Wednesday.

He succeeds businessman, Mark Kerr-Jarrett who was president for the last three years.

Following his election Wednesday, Dear said he intends to build on Kerr-Jarrett’s legacy and that restructuring would be the first order of business. He said he hopes to hammer out the details at a directors’ retreat to be held within the next two months.

“I think that my first task would be to upgrade the activities of the Chamber along modern lines,” Dear said. One of the things recommended (at a recent workshop) was to reduce committees and set up short-term special projects to deal with specific matters. You won’t get all this paper work and waste of time at the members’ meeting where all these committee reports will have to be heard.”

He added: “I am going to suggest that the new board of directors will have a retreat as soon as possible and ask the convenor of the workshop, Associated Management Practices, to come back and guide us through that retreat so that we, the board, would be informed of this modern thinking.”

The new president said he would also seek to establish an executive branch of the board, made up of vice-presidents who will be assigned to speak on particular issues on the Chamber’s behalf.

“I won’t finalise that yet because it is something that the board must agree to,” he said. “But no statement will be issued without getting the approval of the fellow vice-presidents so that it will come as more of a group decision rather than as an individual one. Now on occasion that may not always be possible, but that is what I aim to do.”

And Dear who resigned as a Chamber director two years ago in order to embark on campaign activities for the Jamaica Labour Party, made it clear Wednesday that he would not abuse his position as president to gain political mileage.

“People know my political position and that certainly won’t be reflected in the Chamber. That is something that is very personal and I believe that once you become president of the Chamber, you then become non-political and that you represent the interests of the members regardless of their political persuasion,” he said.

Organisational restructuring aside, Dear, who also served as Chamber president between 1984 and 1986, said he intends to strengthen the business grouping’s financial position.

Despite an increase in their earnings over the last two years, the Chamber cannot afford the services of a full time executive director. They earned $1.2 million last year, compared to $850,000 the previous year.

Chief among the fund-raising activities Dear intends to pursue is the Caribbean trade expo that has been on a two-year hiatus because of an inability to identify a venue.

“We need to get expo going again,” he said. “We used to make a substantial amount of money off the expo and that is just the money side. It was a great exposure for businesses in the west and we really need to find somewhere we can host that. It is disappointing that we haven’t had it for two years. It is a great idea that was going regionally… So I am really going to push to get expo going as our major fund-raising effort.”

He added that the Montego Bay Community College playing field was a potential venue.

The Chamber’s website that was developed at a cost of US$10,000 last year is also being viewed as a potential revenue-earner.

To date, the website has registered some 61,000 hits and the plan is to now embark on e-commerce activities that will see interested members getting a link to the website at a cost.

This is a move that is supported by Dear.

He also said he would seek to improve the Chamber’s lobbying efforts with the government and the first step, he said, would be to make courtesy calls on the different ministries.