We feel the pain and frustration of Professor Errol Morrison who says that not enough is being done by Government to encourage young technologists and scientists.

Just over a week ago, Professor Morrison lamented that though governments have been “clamouring for students to be exposed to STEM (science, technology, engineering, math)-based subjects”, little has been done to help them find jobs in science and technology.

“It’s one thing to train scientists and other STEM-based specialists, but you also have to create jobs for them and this is where the Government has to take a decision…” Professor Morrison is quoted as saying, in part.

We are aware that Professor Morrison has also urged much greater private sector involvement in encouraging and utilising science and technology. Obviously, in a private sector-led economic environment such as Jamaica’s, innovative entrepreneurs should be taking the lead in recruiting and utilising STEM skills.

The Government clearly has a lead role to play in facilitating such enterprise through appropriate incentives, the development of research and educational facilities (always subject to resource constraints), and so forth. But ultimately, visionary entrepreneurship must drive the process.

It’s well established that in several cases enterprising scientists are venturing into the business world on the back of their scientific work.

Professor Morrison, in his interview with the Sunday Observer, identified inventor and entrepreneur Mr Jovan Evans of AquaFlow Products and Services as one such. We are told that Mr Evans’ pump-and-spray product can transform an average of four or five gallons of water into an efficient, portable shower.

We are also told that the innovation — buttressed by scientific knowledge and apparently inspired by the universal reality of necessity being the mother of invention — is making waves commercially.

“This fellow just invented the little pump thing and look, it is going places — China, India are ordering it. So it’s little ideas like these, when you just look at your environment and you say to yourself, how can you change this? How can you improve on this? We really want people to understand that it’s not really far-fetched, it’s right there…” said Professor Morrison.

It seems to us that culture and tradition have much to do with the slow pace of evolution to technological and scientific solutions in Jamaica.

For many generations, in all social classes, Jamaica’s brightest have been encouraged to seek careers in traditional professions, not least law and medicine.

That’s changing ­ perhaps not as fast as Professor Morrison would like, but it is changing — largely because of the demands of a global jobs marketplace that is evolving faster than at any other time in human history.

That evolution will only speed up in the years to come. And it is that evolving market demand that will prove irresistible, pulling Jamaicans and everyone else into a sphere of scientific innovation most of us can’t even begin to imagine.

Notwithstanding resource constraints, Government’s responsibility must be to so accelerate and expand its STEM education mode that all young Jamaicans, not just some, are prepared for that brave (or perhaps bewildering) new world.

But crucially, a forward-looking entrepreneurial sector, driven by the profit motive, should be looking to take full advantage.