AS I was leaving a church service last Sunday in Barbados, a known member of the congregation approached me to lament with evident sadness: “Why the page-one news headlines have to be so depressing…We need a break”. She moved on before I could mutter a response.

Truth is, as readers of the Jamaica Observer would be aware, so-called “bad news” is not only a reflection of life in Barbados where I live and work. It’s a sad, depressing reality at this time across our Caribbean region.

Contrary to what some readers, viewers and listeners of news and commentaries may suspect, media decision-makers, who are known for their adherence to the ethics and principles of journalism, do not, as a norm, seek to publish news deemed by consumers of information as “bad news” in preference to what’s rated in the public domain as “good news”.

As I understand it, the region’s media, in general — minus an irritating print and electronic minority scattered across our community, endeavour to report and analyse with a commitment consistent with the basic tenets of journalism.

However, these observations apart, today’s column is primarily focused on some social and economic problems currently afflicting a few regional countries.

Today, 12 days into 2014, it’s ironical that within the greater Caribbean region we have finance ministers of two of the best known tourism-based economies — Jamaica and Barbados — anxious to assure citizens against new taxes while coping with agreed prescriptions from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Jamaica and T&T

Further, two largely energy-based economies of our region, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela, are now desperately engaged in combating the scourge of murders and robberies in a climate of awful spreading violence.

Between May and December last year, first Jamaica, and then Barbados, were compelled to enter into fiscal management arrangements to overcome mounting economic problems to sustain vital social sector services.

With the dawn of 2014, their respective finance ministers were last week anxiously assuring the public against any introduction of new taxes, undoubtedly hoping to secure some breathing space in coping with multiple pressing social and economic challenges.

Venezuela and T&T

In contrast, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela, long recognised as economies where ‘black gold’ (oil) has provided them special comparative advantages in responding to social and economic challenges, are currently experiencing a most critical period of gun-related murders and robberies.

Following the murder last Tuesday of Venezuela’s internationally famous beauty queen and actress Monica Spear, and her Irish ex-husband, President Nicolas Maduro’s minister of the interior, Miguel Rodriguez, hastily summoned a special meeting of all governors of the 23 states as well as representatives of the 79 towns.

The purpose was to launch a nationwide plan to combat the epidemic of criminality, aware that Venezuela, for all its oil resources and economic investments, is currently burdened with the highest level of violence in many years.

In Trinidad and Tobago, deemed just last month by the World Bank as “one of the wealthiest and well-developed nations in the Caribbean region”, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar was telling the media — following a National Security Council meeting last Tuesday — of the implementation of a nationwide plan to confront the horrors of spreading criminality that accounted for some 20 murders in the first seven days of 2014, and climbing.

Recalling Jamaica?

Perhaps anxious for the country to avoid acquiring the once notorious reputation of Jamaica in recent years as the so-called “murder capital” of the Caribbean, the prime minister pledged to make “maximum use” of the combined resources of the police and army to stop an “evil and violent minority” from continuing to inflict harm, fear and tragedy on the lives of our citizens…”

People everywhere who embrace the rule of law would, I believe, readily share the hopes of both the governments and citizens of Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago for success in their respective national campaigns to stop the wave of killings and robberies.

Even, that is, as they share the hopes of the finance ministers of Barbados (Chris Sinckler) and Jamaica (Peter Phillips) to achieve set objectives with their respective IMF-based fiscal management programmes to at least avoid the introduction of new taxes during 2014 amid lingering apprehension about the future.

New initiatives at combating crime and spurring economic growth regionally are said to be high on the agenda of Caricom Heads of Government for their half-yearly Inter-Sessional Meeting planned for next month in St Vincent and the Grenadines, one of the three Eastern Caribbean countries whose economies were severely affected last month by devastating flood waters.