Dear Editor,

Just as we are encouraged to cut down on our energy use to take the pressure off the country’s oil import bill, in the larger picture, and off the consumers’ JPS bill, closer to home, we are asking Government to rid the law books of old, obsolete, anachronistic, and unnecessary laws and/or regulations that serve to discourage the population from doing anything.

To obtain a needed signature for, say, an export permit, one has to go through at least four or six steps. To my mind, all this bureaucracy is in place to encourage anyone who wants to get through with their business to “pay” to accomplish any task.

Sometimes, the roadblocks appear at the most critical points in the permitting or licensing process, where the temptation is greatest.

The requirement of having to go back and forth in government processes must be altered.

Also, why is it that people are asked to pay application fees, and when there is only one minute missing part of a requirement we have to repay the entire permit requirement?

One government agency that seems to have “got it”, is the Mines and Quarries up at Hope. It took me ONLY 30 minutes to obtain an export permit for a small sample quantity of non-metallic minerals.

One area of improvement that could be made? The permitting process for having what is obviously a “private non-paying” party at one’s home..where a sound system may be playing.

In South Manchester, one has to go to Alligator Pond Police Station for permission, then travel all the way up Spur Tree Hill to be further interviewed by the Collectorate in Mandeville, where the colletorate approves it…then back to Alligator Pond…and so on. The police are going to monitor it, so why don’t they collect on the spot, and remit to the collectorate? Come on, Government, make things easier for us stressd out folks.

Tony Goffe

tony@peeniwalli.com