Still looking for the promised Jamaica
Dear Editor,
“Trains and boats are passing by. They mean a trip to Paris or Rome for someone else, but not for me. The trains and boats and planes took you away, away from me.” The words of this popular song by Dionne Warwick sums up the sadness I felt and still feel about my loved ones leaving Jamaica for a better life.
Many of my countrymen and countrywomen have had to leave behind their families and their children, who, unfortunately, become barrel children.
I have never been foreign-minded, but these days when I look around the land I call home it feels like I am looking into an abyss of despair and doom whilst the United States, Canada, England, and even the small islands seem like promised lands, overflowing with milk and honey.
Sixty years of Independence and self-governance, yet Jamaica is still struggling to survive and is impregnated by the stench of poverty and the prevalence of crime.
The ruling party focuses on economic growth and purports that it takes cash to care. But to the Government I say: Open your eyes and choose your battles wisely. Be selective of the problems that you elect to take on and exercise prudence in the handling of the country’s affairs.
Is it practical to build a recreational facility — Harmony Beach Park — for $1.3 billion dollars when the city of Montego Bay floods, sometimes causing loss of lives, after two to three hours of rain? Is it prudent to build a park when the western region of the island, the entire county of Cornwall, has had no hospital for the past five years and in midst of a pandemic? And I have saved the best, or rather the worst, for last. Is it sensible to spend significantly more than US$7 million, in fact, billions of Jamaican dollars, to print new Jamaican banknotes when threats of famine hover over our heads?
We hear every day of the disastrous effects of the novel coronavirus pandemic and the global recession to come. Yet, in the midst of widespread pandemonium, when Barbados, a tiny island the size of Westmoreland, whose dollar values in the region of BD$1.99 to US$1, has sought to cushion the blow of the pandemic by subsidising the gas prices for its citizens, our Government is focused on new banknotes.
The National Housing Trust, which was meant to help the marginalised citizens of Jamaica become home owners, is not a charitable institution? Then what is it? Is it to be categorised as a financial institution, likened to a bank? Is this what self-governance means to Jamaica? That if I can afford to run, I run. But what about those who can’t? Where is the Opposition? Is the Opposition too busy eating itself from inside out like a termite-infested house?
Sixty years of Independence must bring with it tenacity and accolades, but most importantly a country able to provide for its people the basic necessities of food, shelter, health care, and education. The ruling party must not be penny wise and pound foolish, and the Opposition must rise up, stand, and take its place.
George Bernard
lloydbernardshaw@gmail.com