Dear Editor,
American singer Bobby Womack had a monster-selling record titled Harry Hippie. One verse read: “I’d like to help a man when he’s down/But I can’t help him much when he’s sleeping on the ground/Sorry, Harry, you’re too much weight to carry around. Is Jamaica becoming too much weight for those countries attempting to help us to carry around?
Former head of the European Union (EU) delegation to Jamaica, Ambassador Marco Mazzocchi Alemanni, used to lament the fact that Jamaica and other Caribbean states were reluctant to take up offers of grants, not loans, for constituency development projects. While working voluntarily with the Balaclava Development Area Committee and the Social Development Commission, I realised that the Japanese, EU, US, and several developed countries were willing to offer grants to Jamaican communities if we came up with viable projects and had honest leaders to implement them. Now, after years of neglect, President Barack Obama has turned his attention to offering more aid to Caribbean countries — after all we are living in his backyard.
With the changing, globalised world some offers for help are drying up. But there is still help coming to bolster national security. I believe that US Ambassador to Jamaica Luis G Moreno is the ideal person to support and execute such help. The cold war is again heating up, and if America can assist its own neighbours, then this will also reduce the flow of illegal immigrants from this region. And, as public affairs officer at the US Embassy in Kingston, Joshua Polacheck said, their security and our security are inevitably bound together.
But Ambassador, I urge that in your promise to bring a billion dollars worth of investment to Jamaica you help us in getting a couple of waste-to-energy plants. Others have found the effort to help us in this area too much and have walked away. A former energy minister said that the only reason such a deal fell through when his party was in office was because our Government’s insistence on tipping fees. This drove away investors who were lining up, hence the huge garbage problem we have. If you can help us here, please do.
Mark Clarke
Siloah PO, St Elizabeth
mark_clarke9@yahoo.com
American singer Bobby Womack had a monster-selling record titled Harry Hippie. One verse read: “I’d like to help a man when he’s down/But I can’t help him much when he’s sleeping on the ground/Sorry, Harry, you’re too much weight to carry around. Is Jamaica becoming too much weight for those countries attempting to help us to carry around?
Former head of the European Union (EU) delegation to Jamaica, Ambassador Marco Mazzocchi Alemanni, used to lament the fact that Jamaica and other Caribbean states were reluctant to take up offers of grants, not loans, for constituency development projects. While working voluntarily with the Balaclava Development Area Committee and the Social Development Commission, I realised that the Japanese, EU, US, and several developed countries were willing to offer grants to Jamaican communities if we came up with viable projects and had honest leaders to implement them. Now, after years of neglect, President Barack Obama has turned his attention to offering more aid to Caribbean countries — after all we are living in his backyard.
With the changing, globalised world some offers for help are drying up. But there is still help coming to bolster national security. I believe that US Ambassador to Jamaica Luis G Moreno is the ideal person to support and execute such help. The cold war is again heating up, and if America can assist its own neighbours, then this will also reduce the flow of illegal immigrants from this region. And, as public affairs officer at the US Embassy in Kingston, Joshua Polacheck said, their security and our security are inevitably bound together.
But Ambassador, I urge that in your promise to bring a billion dollars worth of investment to Jamaica you help us in getting a couple of waste-to-energy plants. Others have found the effort to help us in this area too much and have walked away. A former energy minister said that the only reason such a deal fell through when his party was in office was because our Government’s insistence on tipping fees. This drove away investors who were lining up, hence the huge garbage problem we have. If you can help us here, please do.
Mark Clarke
Siloah PO, St Elizabeth
mark_clarke9@yahoo.com