Dear Editor,
It is becoming clearer and clearer by the day that this “crime wave” is assuming the face of a tsunami that will consume us all. It is bigger than the police, it is bigger than the army, it is bigger than the sociologists,it is bigger than the psychiatrists, and it is bigger than the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP)all put together.
When we advertise how wonderful Jamaica is we need to have a trailer that tells tourists that they must not resist petty robberies or they can be killed. It is almost a knee-jerk reaction that if you are walking with a female companion and someone rides up on a motorbike and attempts to rob the lady you will react, but this shouldn’t cost you your life.
Tourism is one of the economic pillars that we depend on and The Economist magazine says,” The Government may not want tourists to be walled off from the rest of Jamaica, but it can hardly expect the industry to adopt a different model if it can’t provide law and order”.
Psychiatrist Dr Wendel Abel said,“Poor life skills, coupled with malnourished brains, are among the root causes of psychopathic behaviour displayed regularly in Jamaican society, which have too often led to people being murdered in trivial disputes.”
We are living in a society where Jamaican kids want to grow up to be lottery scammers, not doctors, lawyers, engineers, journalists, computer programmers, etc. Sociologist Horace Levy recommends, among a number of measures, that we should, “Begin a multi-billion-dollar campaign of development in low-income communities to end the exclusion and the dissing of the two-fifths of our population below or just barely above the poverty line. This has to be conducted in continuous dialogue with the communities and along with their leaders.” The community renewal programme, drafted with much consultation by the Planning Institute of Jamaica at Bruce Golding’s direction, is there to be implemented. The question is who will survive to enjoy the promised “poverty to prosperity’?
Mark Clarke
Siloah PO, St Elizabeth
mark_clarke9@yahoo.com
It is becoming clearer and clearer by the day that this “crime wave” is assuming the face of a tsunami that will consume us all. It is bigger than the police, it is bigger than the army, it is bigger than the sociologists,it is bigger than the psychiatrists, and it is bigger than the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP)all put together.
When we advertise how wonderful Jamaica is we need to have a trailer that tells tourists that they must not resist petty robberies or they can be killed. It is almost a knee-jerk reaction that if you are walking with a female companion and someone rides up on a motorbike and attempts to rob the lady you will react, but this shouldn’t cost you your life.
Tourism is one of the economic pillars that we depend on and The Economist magazine says,” The Government may not want tourists to be walled off from the rest of Jamaica, but it can hardly expect the industry to adopt a different model if it can’t provide law and order”.
Psychiatrist Dr Wendel Abel said,“Poor life skills, coupled with malnourished brains, are among the root causes of psychopathic behaviour displayed regularly in Jamaican society, which have too often led to people being murdered in trivial disputes.”
We are living in a society where Jamaican kids want to grow up to be lottery scammers, not doctors, lawyers, engineers, journalists, computer programmers, etc. Sociologist Horace Levy recommends, among a number of measures, that we should, “Begin a multi-billion-dollar campaign of development in low-income communities to end the exclusion and the dissing of the two-fifths of our population below or just barely above the poverty line. This has to be conducted in continuous dialogue with the communities and along with their leaders.” The community renewal programme, drafted with much consultation by the Planning Institute of Jamaica at Bruce Golding’s direction, is there to be implemented. The question is who will survive to enjoy the promised “poverty to prosperity’?
Mark Clarke
Siloah PO, St Elizabeth
mark_clarke9@yahoo.com