In the 1950s, when 17-year-old Lloyd Cole sailed on a banana boat from Kingston on the two-week trip to the English port of Southampton, 10 stowaways were found on the very steamship on which he travelled.

As the ship was long outside of colonial Jamaica’s territorial limit, and it would be uneconomical for the slow, lumbering vessel to turn around, the men were taken in by the English authorities at Southampton and, being British subjects, they spent a few weeks in jail and were then liberated on to British soil.

Long after he returned to Jamaica as Dr Lloyd Cole in 1965, he recounted the stark social problems facing black-skinned Jamaican arrivals in England. “When we went out looking for housing there was a standard sign in the windows and doorways which said, ‘Rooms for let. Irish, Dogs and Niggers not welcome’,” he said.

He tells me that some time in the 1960s the British Government outlawed the sign but could not control the practice. “The signs had disappeared but once you showed up in response to a ‘room for let’ there was no law against the person simply slamming the door in your face.”

In 1990 Cole, a son of the soil and a highly trained medical professional, conceptualised the International Drydock Services and Allied Facilities (IDSAF) and had it duly registered. He made contact with every conceivable person of importance and authority in Jamaica, politically and otherwise, and in the international community, sought approvals, had surveys done, drafted project documents on the plan in which he itemised the numerous linkages and the ability to transform Clarendon and its environs into an industrial city and Jamaica as a major international maritime hub.

Dr Cole used his own money to travel to the Far East to meet with the Chinese and other potential investors and at all times was very cognisant of the fact that a project of this scope needed governmental endorsement because of its game-changing capabilities.

In the last JLP Administration it met with the approval of then Minister Christopher Tufton and, even before the JLP lost the election, the person who would be Tufton’s replacement in Industry, Investment and Commerce, Anthony Hylton, had met with him and was fully on board. After the election, Minister Hylton was even more charged up on the project, but by then the PNP administration was speaking of a logistics hub which was something of a step-up from the JLP’s naming of it as a multi-modal maritime facility.

The fact is, the present version of the PNP’s proposed logistics hub which was also the JLP’s multi-modal maritime facility was nothing more than a refined version of Dr Cole’s IDSAF.

In the diaspora conference recently held in the tourist resort city of Montego Bay, how good it would have been had Dr Lloyd Cole, himself a man in touch with many of the cultural realities of those occupying the space known as the ‘diaspora’, been presented as the person whose brainchild the planned logistics hub is.

When I called him last week to enquire of his participation, he told me that he had contacted a high official of the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce and was told that if he wanted to he could attend — If he wanted to?

To me, an opportunity was lost to present to important, working members of the diaspora, said to represent about four million Jamaicans working, living and retired overseas, mostly in the USA, Canada and Britain — a workable idea conceptualised by one of their very own.

Many members of the diaspora are still not convinced that any Government in Jamaica will carry the talk to where it can actually walk. But even as we can appreciate that politicians need to convince our people that any positives arising out of a successful ministerial or governmental policy is theirs and theirs alone, more pragmatism was needed in the diaspora conference in relation to the logistics hub, which represents the main plank of the Government’s growth agenda.

Somehow Dr Cole could have been used as the ideal leverage at that conference, but that opportunity has been lost. For now.

Good news out of the Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining?

All of last week I was being told of a buzz in the ‘STEM’ ministry — something that one person told me “would allow us, at the very least, to pass the first IMF test”.

It is no secret to anyone that Minister Paulwell has been the most practical minister in terms of deliverables. Other ministries are talk shops where highly competent, well-trained individuals are used for show, much to their dislike.

We are sick of the talk and need to smell the rubber hitting the road.

Minister Paulwell, is it just rumour or is it factual?

When I called someone close to the ministry yesterday, he said that any announcement on anything that I had heard would be made “in the appropriate time”. He further went on to say, “If all the threads are not properly interwoven, the ministry is not about to go off half-cocked and make any grand announcement. The country has had enough of that. I really cannot say any more on that, and I hope you will appreciate it.”

Minister Paulwell, are you about to strike the iron while it’s hot again? I wait with bated breath.

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