The notification on the home page of Jamaica’s Vision 2030 website says it starkly: “No upcoming events, check back soon,” lending an air of finality, as if it were sounding the death knell to the country’s lone long-term development plan to raise its world status.

Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness, and before him, the Programme Director Ms Peisha Bryan of the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), pronounced that Vision 2030 will fail to meet its lofty objectives, six years shy of its eponymous deadline.

Critically, the announcements were not followed by any mea culpa or acknowledgement of accountability; no robust pledge to renew efforts to pursue its goals; no disclosure of how much resources have been wasted; and no new revised deadlines for the programme.

It seems, on the surface, as if this epic failure is being waved off as “ah nuh nutten”, a popular Jamaican way of dismissing developments deemed of no consequence.

But 15 years of Vision 2023 and all of the nation’s scarce resources spent towards its achievements cannot be allowed to go just like that.

In 2009, six years before the United Nations (UN) agreed on the much-touted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Jamaica, under Prime Minister Bruce Golding, set off on a plan to make the country “the place of choice to live, work, raise families and do business”, with no one to be left behind. One could say Jamaica was ahead of the UN.

The plan represented a set of well-thought-out ideals around which all Jamaicans could work to bring about, in the words of then Prime Minister Golding, “… a new society that is inclusive of the dreams and aspirations of all Jamaicans; a society that is secure, humane and just; and a place for which we all take responsibility in owning and protecting for future generations”.

Giving it bipartisan support, then Opposition Leader Mrs Portia Simpson Miller said achievement of the plan and its successful implementation would “be seen by future generations of Jamaicans as a treasured part of our collective patrimony”.

The 17 UN SDGs to which Jamaica subscribed through Vision 2030 in 2015 summarised it thus:

“No poverty; zero hunger; good health and well-being; quality education, gender equality; clean water and sanitation; affordable and clean energy; decent work and economic growth; industry, innovation and infrastructure; reduced inequalities; sustainable cities and communities; responsible consumption and production; climate action; life below water; life on land; peace, justice and institutions; and partnerships for the goals.”

It is to be noted that the PIOJ’s Ms Bryan had suggested at the agency’s quarterly media briefing that being fixated on timelines was never the intention behind the plan, and that with those targets seemingly further out of sight the Government “is in the process of looking at what we do beyond 2030… So, for the next fiscal year, we are planning to commence the process of evaluation”.

We in this space were always under the impression that there was an ongoing process of monitoring and evaluation of the progress of Vision 2030 designed to update and revise the plan as necessary. We are now left to wonder if the plan was ever receiving the requisite attention or was just there as a pipe dream, lulling Jamaicans into a false sense of security.