Dear Editor,
The Government had a good year in two of three critical sub-sectors. Both Dr Peter Phillips and Ronald Thwaites demonstrated strong intellectual command and leadership as they confronted the current exigencies of their ministries.
The gargantuan task of reining in our strangulating debt under the prescriptive mandate of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is clearly showing signs of initial success. The absolute necessity of achieving the core objective of this programme of debt reduction means there can be no turning back or recalcitrance. Pain and hardships are all around, but the challenge is to make them be the birth pains of a more economically secure future for all Jamaicans.
Dr Phillips's job has not been easy. He has had to cut and shaft spending whilst imposing harsh taxes in a limping economy. His openness and frankness has been helpful, so far. But he must, in 2014, deal with the nascent perception that the prescriptive economic medicine is an overkill to small businesses, shopkeepers, tradesmen, bar owners, higglers, and hustlers -- the belly of the Jamaican society. There is also an urgent imperative to strategically and persuasively engage the IMF to revisit the matter of the social safety net.
The success of the broader objectives of the Government rests somewhat on the head of Education Minister Ronald Thwaites. Our ability to increase productivity and dwarf antisocial trends will largely depend on improvement in the quality delivered in our classrooms. Minister Thwaites has shown the willingness and capacity to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies that have entombed our education sector, condemning it to low performances and hopelessness for too many.
It is unworthy of debate that education must be tailored to our country's and children's needs. There has to be more than tweaking; there has to be new and broader thinking to fix the imperatives. Mr Thwaites must yield no ground to the non-cerebral resistance to change.
The twin challenges of the economy and education are what hold Peter Bunting, the minister of national security, a virtual hostage. On the one hand, he cannot get the resources necessary to fight the monster he confronts; a monster which thrives on our economic malaise. On the other hand, his burden is increased by the steady influx of youth from a broken education system, who are siphoned into the decadence and antisocial notion that haunts our country. Minister Bunting is failing where others before him have, and so will all who come after him until or unless we fix the economy and education.
Delford G Morgan
Montego Bay PO
pepe.morgan@yahoo.com
The Bunting/Thwaites enigma
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The Government had a good year in two of three critical sub-sectors. Both Dr Peter Phillips and Ronald Thwaites demonstrated strong intellectual command and leadership as they confronted the current exigencies of their ministries.
The gargantuan task of reining in our strangulating debt under the prescriptive mandate of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is clearly showing signs of initial success. The absolute necessity of achieving the core objective of this programme of debt reduction means there can be no turning back or recalcitrance. Pain and hardships are all around, but the challenge is to make them be the birth pains of a more economically secure future for all Jamaicans.
Dr Phillips's job has not been easy. He has had to cut and shaft spending whilst imposing harsh taxes in a limping economy. His openness and frankness has been helpful, so far. But he must, in 2014, deal with the nascent perception that the prescriptive economic medicine is an overkill to small businesses, shopkeepers, tradesmen, bar owners, higglers, and hustlers -- the belly of the Jamaican society. There is also an urgent imperative to strategically and persuasively engage the IMF to revisit the matter of the social safety net.
The success of the broader objectives of the Government rests somewhat on the head of Education Minister Ronald Thwaites. Our ability to increase productivity and dwarf antisocial trends will largely depend on improvement in the quality delivered in our classrooms. Minister Thwaites has shown the willingness and capacity to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies that have entombed our education sector, condemning it to low performances and hopelessness for too many.
It is unworthy of debate that education must be tailored to our country's and children's needs. There has to be more than tweaking; there has to be new and broader thinking to fix the imperatives. Mr Thwaites must yield no ground to the non-cerebral resistance to change.
The twin challenges of the economy and education are what hold Peter Bunting, the minister of national security, a virtual hostage. On the one hand, he cannot get the resources necessary to fight the monster he confronts; a monster which thrives on our economic malaise. On the other hand, his burden is increased by the steady influx of youth from a broken education system, who are siphoned into the decadence and antisocial notion that haunts our country. Minister Bunting is failing where others before him have, and so will all who come after him until or unless we fix the economy and education.
Delford G Morgan
Montego Bay PO
pepe.morgan@yahoo.com
The Bunting/Thwaites enigma
-->