Dear Editor,

I believe we need to take a serious look at our approach to development and focus on sustainability rather than perpetuate exploitation.

Sustainable development focuses on the people in a particular area and plans development to benefit as broad a cross section of the community as possible and aims to provide a better standard of living for those in the areas surrounding.

Exploitation focuses on developing enclaves for the enrichment of particular investors in projects, with little or no focus on the impact of the investment on uplifting the surrounding communities.

Our focus in Jamaica, for a long time now, has been to create “enclaves” which are designed to benefit mainly foreign investors who develop beautiful properties which are exclusive or all-inclusive, mainly targeted to attract foreign visitors but excludes the majority of Jamaicans and perpetuates the exploitation of our people and our country.

One great examples is Port Antonio, where, instead of developing and implementing a master plan for the total development of the town and the community, the entire west harbour was enclosed with a wall and separated from the town to create a tourism cruise pier and marina to attract the rich and famous and totally neglect the development of the town of Port Antonio. The result has been a continued degradation of the town and a failure to attract visitors as the concept was flawed in the first place.

Falmouth has gone on a similar path, with the development of a cruise pier and the walled development of shops controlled by mainly foreign investors with little focus on the development of the town and the small players in the tourism industry.

The most recent investments in Port Royal have taken a similar route, with the focus on a pier and some shops attached and few visits of cruise ships. Again we ignore the concept of the development of the entire town and the people within to focus on a few shops for the benefit of a few investors who are unlikely to see major profits in the long term because the town is neglected.

What we urgently need in Jamaica is a disruption of our approach to development to focus on sustainably developing our communities as a whole, where the major beneficiaries are our own people.

Let us stop the piecemeal approach which feeds corruption and graft of politicians and public officials and start to embrace serious progress to move our people and our country to First World status rather than perpetuate exploitation and exclusion of our people from reaping the real benefits of development.

Robert Stephens

rspragma@yahoo.com