Dear Editor,

The Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC) is trying to determine the reason for the significant decline in revenue earned by the metro pound. Revenues from every area in downtown Kingston would be down not only because there is a weaker spending power, but the fact that this is a most inhospitable place to do business, whether walking or driving.

You have to be looking out for car breakers, police, regular thieves, chain-grabbers, pickpockets (who now include women) and the predatory wreckers taking away your vehicle. What the KSAC has not told us is that the contracted wrecker companies get most of the fee for retrieving your car.

Then the hustling that takes place, although not so rampant where your vehicle is towed away, includes those who wait for you around some corner on the way to the pound to negotiate a lesser fee for a hassle-free release. So I am not surprised that KSAC is making less money.

Downtown needs a coherent, holistic, all-inclusive plan and that long-touted parking meter programme needs to be implemented. Parking in front of business places must be reserved for customers and not taken up by operators (some are blocked off by stones from as early as 6:30 am on Barry and Princess streets and to a lesser extent, King Street and Orange streets).

Downtown is under no reliable security or proper management, just some ad hoc thing where everybody is trying to ‘eat-a-food’. Church Street below the Pearnel Charles arcade is like a ghost town; businesses are suffering as robbers prey on people and vehicles. There is a house on Church Street, almost across from the old Wonards building, that is a seeming haven and get-away for robbers as the back of the house opens on a lane. This needs to be patrolled.

A devalued downtown Kingston needs a plan to save it from further degeneration and economic decline.

Michael Spence

Kingston 6

micspen2@Hotmail.com