Whenever politicians refuse to put on their thinking caps, they betray their bankruptcy of ideas by opting for the easiest solution to problem areas, irrespective of the potential damage they could cause.

Who will forget the official closing down of the Jamaica Omnibus Service (JOS) in the early 1980s under Mr Pearnel Charles, who then legitimised the dirty, ramshackle minibus service that unleashed the worst elements of our culture, with such things as crude, lewd and loud music and ‘no-panty days’ on the buses?

There was also Dr Omar Davies’ high interest rate policy of the 1990s, the easy answer to holding down inflation and stabilising the dollar, but which led to Finsac and its horror stories.

Now, it’s the turn of the tourism minister, Mr Edmund Bartlett, to display his own bankruptcy of ideas. Finding it difficult to collect the US$2 charged to cruise ship passengers to help finance the Tourism Enhancement Fund (TEF), he is, like a bull in China shop, bulldozing his way to double the passenger head tax on hotel guests, not caring whether it kills the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg.

Mr Bartlett also wants to have his way with the TEF, so he is proposing a merger with the Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo), the agency that implements projects funded by the TEF. The two were kept apart to prevent one entity from having responsibility to collect the head tax, deliberate on how and where the money is spent and set about to spend that money, all this without independent oversight and the usual checks and balances.

Mr Bartlett clearly has his ears plugged so that he cannot hear the wise counsel of the tourism industry, through its umbrella Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA), which is telling him that the move is a very bad one.

Neither is he willing to heed the warnings by the Opposition spokesman on tourism, Dr Wykeham McNeill, who understands very well how politicians operate and who can see the danger to the TEF’s integrity under the proposed merger.

Indeed, both this newspaper and The Gleaner have tried to get the minister to open his eyes before it is too late.

Commenting in its editorial on the merger idea, The Gleaner cautioned: “A potential of any such intermingling, beyond what currently exists, is a diminution of transparency — or worse… In recent years, however, we have noted with concern, as have many in the tourism business, the TEF seemingly skirting at the edge with the kinds of projects it has been willing to finance and the amount of money it has been ready to put into some.

“Bluntly, some of them have seemed to us to be downright private commercial ventures, although the TEF will probably insist on their relevance and its capacity to make credible cases for its decisions…This potential that the merger would provide for the opaque deployment of resources and less robust interrogation of decisions is particularly important with the likelihood of greater inflows into the fund with the increase of the tax on air passengers.”

Dr McNeill reiterated the Opposition’s call that the TEF be safeguarded from frivolous things such as trips to exotic places and extravagant festival sponsorships that seem to bear little or no fruit.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding should be asking why is it getting increasingly harder to find people of integrity to serve as directors of the fund.

We are again urging him to save the TEF by taking it under his wings at Jamaica House.