TOMORROW, Jamaica Broilers will do what Jamaicans are anxiously waiting on the business community to do, cut the price of staple goods, in keeping with the fall of oil prices.

The company announced on Tuesday that it will reduce by $3 per kilo the price of its flagship A-Grade Whole Bird — popularly known as Best Dressed Chicken. Way to go Jamaica Broilers!

“We are constantly reviewing our prices and are happy to be able to offer a reduction at this time,” the company’s vice-president for finance and corporate planning, Ian Parsard said in a statement that could not have come at a better time, the beginning of a new year.

Jamaica Broilers has tended to be a good corporate citizen, understanding the importance of chicken meat to Jamaicans, especially the poor. Further, it has done what doesn’t happen here often enough. We are accustomed to seeing prices increase at the drop of a hat. Reducing prices, on the other hand, has usually come with severe moaning, groaning and excruciating reluctance.

With the price of oil dropping rapidly on the international market, we insist that every item that has factored in the price of energy in its final cost should be going down now.

What could be better for Jamaica than to see an avalanche of price decreases early in this new year? Naturally, we expect that some price adjustments will not move downwards with the rapidity we desire for some obvious reasons, including the need for certain vulnerable businesses to recover from a long period of recessionary pressures. But not all have the same excuse. We would urge those who can to consider their compatriots and have a heart for the suffering poor.

The evil that men do

We join with the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ) and journalists across the globe in condemning in the strongest possible terms the slaughter of colleagues at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France. It is indeed an attack on democracy and freedom of the press, because the dastardly murders were directly related to the work they do in furthering freedom of expression.

Men who slay journalists in that manner are clearly demonstrating what would happen if they had their way — no freedom to disagree with or hold a view of which they do not approve.

In dark hours like these, we appreciate it all the more that in Jamaica we enjoy freedom of the press and we implore all journalists to do everything to preserve this treasured asset and our democratic way of life.

To our colleagues in France, we urge them be not intimidated. These cowardly and soulless terrorists must not win the day. They do so if they succeed in getting us to recoil from doing our duty to humanity.

The Jamaica Observer extends its deepest sympathies to the people and Government of France, and hope that the murderers will be brought to justice in the shortest possible time.