MONTEGO BAY, St James – Jamaica Labour Party General Secretary Karl Samuda has criticised the methodologies used by pollsters to arrive at party standings and instead called for isolated polling in each constituency which he said would give a more accurate picture of which party is ahead.

Arguing that the methods used are similar to those in the United States for an election “between two people”, Samuda implied that such a system was ineffective in the Jamaican scenario. Safe seats, he said, should also be ignored.

“…You cannot do a general poll with the rest because we are not running a presidential election, we are running a parliamentary election and it is the majority that forms the Government,” said Samuda, who was speaking at the party’s East Central St James workers’ meeting on Sunday.

“So in order to know who is ahead and who is behind, you would have to poll the seats individually and you would have to poll them with not less than 500 samples each which would come to just over 20,000 people to build in our system the kind of protection that you could rely on,” he said.

Meanwhile, the party’s sitting member of parliament for the area Ed Bartlett – who is also the opposition spokesman on tourism – promised that a Bruce Golding-led government would guarantee that all workers in the tourism sector have a pension plan, among other benefits.

“As the spokesman for tourism, by way of policy, the Jamaica Labour Party Government under Bruce Golding will make sure that the rights of the workers of the industry are protected,” he said.

“Some of the hotels have a pension plan but most of them don’t have anything, particularly the new investments. The Jamaica Labour Party is committed to ensure that a pension plan is put in place for the workers of the tourism industry,” he assured.