The headlines are telling us that Jamaica is trying hard to be a grown-up. After all, she will be 50 years old as an independent nation next year, and she needs to have something to show for it. And so in her 49th year, we sense a scramble to put things as right as they can be. We are trying to heal a very deep wound, inflicted by whom we are trying to discover, in the Manatt Enquiry.

We have “strong and free” Jamaicans serving in our judiciary and security forces. DPP Paula Llewellyn and Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington are competent, confident Jamaicans, children of Independence and independent thinkers. Their responses to issues are knowledgeable and reassuring. They do not carry that semi-apologetic tone of the generation immediately preceding them. I believe that this information age has made us at once more independent and more supportive of each other.

A visiting friend who had been away for several years, marvelled when I told him I was about to call our housekeeper on her cellphone. In his time, phones were attached to the walls of middle- and upper-class homes. He also commented on the wide use of the internet. My manicurist checked webmd.com to learn more about her child’s illness and was able to partner easily with her doctors to help bring about a cure for the child’s troubling condition which had landed her in hospital for several weeks at a time.

We have so many means of communicating and gathering information that our leaders are finally realising that “honesty is the best policy”. Every single one of us is now under the microscope. At the immigration desk in Toronto airport, a colleague journalist says that he works at the Observer. The officer immediately types his name in Google, and presto, his articles appear on the screen. The officer regards him with new respect and stamps his papers quickly.

The old arrogance that we used to see in politicians is diminishing, and we now have ministers of government gaining multiple “friends” on Facebook. They are in good company – most world leaders have Facebook pages with President Obama’s being one of the best managed. Sarah Palin’s “tweets” have however backfired on her, as the latest surveys are revealing.

In the old days, a news story would appear in the press and be carried in a radio broadcast. The drama would fizzle after about nine days, making it a “nine-day wonder”. No more. A single transgression gets carried in the traditional media and then becomes amplified on the various media websites. Ordinary folk who are bloggers will re-report these stories; there will be multiple comments on Facebook and the buzz keeps returning in large and small waves.

Bear in mind, however, that literacy is still a huge issue. Our churches need to become more practical and less preachy, spearheading volunteer-driven literacy programmes.

Volunteerism continues to be alive and well in Jamaica. However, the flip side is the limited pool of professionals available to run outreach organisations. You therefore have some reasonably paid individuals, being propped up by overworked volunteers. Management guru Francis Wade recently wrote an article about “black holes” in organisations, where tasks are assigned, never to be heard of again. Charitable and church organisations are filled with these types, who seem to have no conscience even when reminded that they are being paid with funds collected from kind, but not particularly well-off folk.

Wade says that “black holes” do not keep their jobs for long in the USA where the measurement of productivity is well developed. Here in Jamaica, we frustrate hard-working team members by mollycoddling their charming but unproductive colleagues.

These “passengers” are undermining Jamaica’s productivity, making us a barefooted 49-year-old with hat in hand, instead of hand to the wheel. We hope our entrepreneurs will share with our jobless youth in the new PSOJ “YUTE” project, the humbling tasks they faced when they first decided that they would pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

As we discuss the indiscipline and crime in our society, and hear the calls for better parenting, we cannot wait any longer to put in a well-managed system where more social workers are employed to monitor families in need. This slowly maturing country must focus on the roots of our social problems. We have been studied to death, and all our challenges neatly power-pointed, but not enough is being done on the ground to ensure that the poor child of today does not become the gang member of tomorrow.

Last week, I spent a few days in gorgeous Negril, delighted at the sight of so many visitors enjoying this unique resort town. The beaches are as inviting as ever, and the little restaurants dotting the shoreline, delightful. Our tourism workers are amazing – they communicate in their service their love for the industry. However, the little town of Negril is woefully disorganised, a congested hodgepodge of shops, taxis and pedestrians with nowhere to walk. We have to do better than this.

Out of the current enquiries and probes, should come lessons for us all. Let us use them to make the next half of our first century as an independent nation, one that will embrace honesty, diligence and humility. Let us call laziness by its real name and beat the slouches at their own game. We know them well – they are the ones who never write a note in a meeting but always have a lot to say, who never return phone calls or emails, who never volunteer to lead any project, and who have over-inflated egos. Let us judge ourselves by the work we do, not by what we say we are going to do. Let us give better recognition to the efficient and generous members of our organisations, not the ones who are always hogging the limelight.

Jamaica can only become a grown-up country, if our leaders and professionals, many educated by the sweat of poor Jamaicans, commit to doing some real work and quit the window dressing.

lowriechin@aim.com

www.lowrie-chin.blogspot.com