Our front page lead story today reports on an issue which this space cannot ignore.

The Spanish Ambassador to Jamaica, Mr Jesus Silva, in an address to the Rotary Club of Kingston’s weekly luncheon yesterday, lamented the almost crippling effect that the high cost of electricity has been having on investors, particularly those in the tourism sector.

“The electricity factor is a very great hurdle to make investment in Jamaica profitable. It is a concern that the foreign investors have, and it is a concern also shared by some companies of the private sector,” Ambassador Silva said.

He is right.

Hoteliers, we know, have been reeling from the effects of the increases in non-fuel energy charges implemented by the JPS last year. In fact, Ambassador Silva confirmed complaints we had been receiving from the sector that they have seen their electricity costs go up by as much as 70 per cent.

Based on that level of expense, it is extremely difficult for hotels, particularly the larger ones that are very high consumers of electricity, to make a profit.

With the tourism industry likely to lose US$350 million this year because of the civil unrest last week in Kingston, we expect that many of these hotels will experience extreme difficulty staying afloat.

The same applies to the manufacturing sector, which is hurting from high electricity costs.

A way must be found, we submit, to ease the burden on these sectors, as well as on householders who are already paying too much for energy.

At the same time, the Government needs to fast-track its plans for the adoption of alternative energy, as that will give us a fighting chance.

Barring the media backfired, PM

We can fully understand why Prime Minister Bruce Golding wouldn’t want to be accompanied by objective lens on his first trip into Tivoli Gardens, the capital of his West Kingston garrison constituency.

After all, given all that has transpired from his vow to pay the political price for backing Mr Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, the alleged drug lord who used to run West Kingston, to his eleventh-hour change of heart two weeks ago on the United States’ extradition request for Mr Coke, the potential for an embarrassing rejection by the Tivoli residents was overripe to say the least.

And even though the howls for his resignation have abated somewhat in the aftermath of his apology, Mr Golding is not out of the proverbial woods yet.

Indeed, as this space pointed out prior to Mr Golding’s apparent resumption of his senses, unless he comes clean with us, it’s all going to come out, sooner or later, bit by bit in the most humiliating of ways.

We know it, and we know Mr Golding knows it too.

We believe, therefore, that Mr Golding and his handlers erred in barring the media from covering his visit to Tivoli. For as was evident in the coverage on television Wednesday night and in yesterday’s edition of the Observer, the objective of sanitising his encounter with his constituents was lost in the reports gathered by journalists after he left.