Dear Editor,
Karl Samuda, minister of industry, commerce, agriculture and fisheries, says he intends to promote the use of hydroponic operations to grow crops such as vegetables in inner-city communities.
This is a typical Kingston, quasi-colonial political plan, where Kingston dictates and gets everything when agriculture is dying in the rural areas. Samuda is focusing on Kingston’s inner cities while scamming becomes one of the substitutes.
Do not get me wrong, it is not a bad idea that he is suggesting, and it is not a new one either, but rural Jamaica is dying and needs a rescue plan to resuscitate economic, self-reliant activity in those areas. What you see in Montego Bay is the result of years of neglect and subsequent deterioration.
Aren’t there any social scientists in the Government to inform them that what is going on in St James cannot be given a quick fix by draconian laws or temporary police occupation of territory? They must come to realise that it is a deeper social and economic problem.
Let us call for a national rural rescue plan and get some rural sociologists on board. How is it that the Department of Social Sciences at The University of the West Indies is so quiet? I do hope they have not become so comfortable that they have also become downright intellectually lazy.
Rural development is that which forms the roots of Jamaica. If those roots die, the tree called Jamaica goes with it; we are all dead. Wake up, Jamaica! At least let us hear the intellectual ‘chatocracy’, the masses in the street, vocal minorities, singers and players of instruments, the churches — with honest intellectuals giving scientific analysis to provide direction.
A ‘Rural Development Commission’ is a must if Jamaica is to be pulled back from the brink and not become a criminal’s paradise. Rescue rural Jamaica and you would have rescued Jamaica.
Michael Spence
Liguanea PO, St Andrew
micspen2@hotmail.com
Karl Samuda, minister of industry, commerce, agriculture and fisheries, says he intends to promote the use of hydroponic operations to grow crops such as vegetables in inner-city communities.
This is a typical Kingston, quasi-colonial political plan, where Kingston dictates and gets everything when agriculture is dying in the rural areas. Samuda is focusing on Kingston’s inner cities while scamming becomes one of the substitutes.
Do not get me wrong, it is not a bad idea that he is suggesting, and it is not a new one either, but rural Jamaica is dying and needs a rescue plan to resuscitate economic, self-reliant activity in those areas. What you see in Montego Bay is the result of years of neglect and subsequent deterioration.
Aren’t there any social scientists in the Government to inform them that what is going on in St James cannot be given a quick fix by draconian laws or temporary police occupation of territory? They must come to realise that it is a deeper social and economic problem.
Let us call for a national rural rescue plan and get some rural sociologists on board. How is it that the Department of Social Sciences at The University of the West Indies is so quiet? I do hope they have not become so comfortable that they have also become downright intellectually lazy.
Rural development is that which forms the roots of Jamaica. If those roots die, the tree called Jamaica goes with it; we are all dead. Wake up, Jamaica! At least let us hear the intellectual ‘chatocracy’, the masses in the street, vocal minorities, singers and players of instruments, the churches — with honest intellectuals giving scientific analysis to provide direction.
A ‘Rural Development Commission’ is a must if Jamaica is to be pulled back from the brink and not become a criminal’s paradise. Rescue rural Jamaica and you would have rescued Jamaica.
Michael Spence
Liguanea PO, St Andrew
micspen2@hotmail.com