The safety features of a foreign car built for the Jamaican market are generally inferior to those built for the United States, Canada, and Great Britain markets. Of course, even though a car may be from Toyota, Nissan, or Mazda-Japanese brands, they are most likely built to a more exacting standard in the United States, Canada, and England.
Why is this so? Is it because those are wealthy and powerful nations? That may be a part of it; nevertheless, the simple answer is that those governments ensure that products coming into their country are of a standard they are comfortable with.
They create standards for cars entering their markets and all other products their consumers use. This process is not a one-off process where congress or the parliament passes laws, and that’s the end of it. It is a continuous evaluation process. In some cases, the laws passed have sunset clauses, meaning after several years, congress revisits a law to see whether it has worked the way it was intended.
This is not about cars, the American congress, the British House of Commons, or the Canadian Parliament. It is about the people’s representatives doing the work they were sent to do.
We live in a world that is continuously changing; our people are connected to others thousands of miles around the globe, all within a nano-second at the click of a mouse. Consequently, the parliament/congress must be ever vigilant on behalf of their nation.
Old and archaic laws must be updated or rewritten as circumstances change, and new laws must be enacted to deal with emerging eventualities.
Can anyone truthfully say that the Jamaican parliament has been up to the task laid out in the foregone?
This brings me to the question of the theft of investment monies belonging to former sprint star Usain Bolt and others. Where there are lax rules governing any part of the public or private sector, criminal elements will surely be prying and prodding to exploit those weaknesses.
Theft, scams, and swindling are all too common in the digital age, and it is not unique to Jamaica by any stretch of the imagination. The question, however, must be, what are the provisions in place statutorily to protect all Jamaicans, not just Usain Bolt?
The theft of monies from Usain Bolt is only news because he is Usain Bolt.
But this is not new; people have been losing their hard-earned savings in institutions that strict operating procedures in law should govern. And what has the Jamaican legislature done about it? What have they done about Jamaica Public Services Company’s monopoly and how it operates with total impunity and incompetence in the space?
What has the legislature done about the Registrar General Department or Motor Vehicle Department that has been allowed to continue for decades as a cesspool of corruption, to the point it is the norm to pay and receive a driver’s license even if you cannot drive an automobile?
Try applying for a birth certificate, and you will probably die from old age if not from the country’s inordinately high violent crime rate. These issues can be remedied with simple legislation that makes it mandatory for Jamaicans to receive the services they pay for within a certain time stipulated in the law.
Knowing how long you will have to wait to receive an answer from a government agency is not novel. Every Jamaican applying to enter the United States, Canada, or Great Britain knows the timeline.
The problem plaguing the nation is a crisis of leadership. There is no shortage of pontificators vying in the parliament for airtime, and there is no shortage of wannabe leaders waiting for their turn at the slop trough of the public purse. What the public receives in return is incompetence and not much else.
Where is the legislative urgency that is required to protect the Jamaican people?
On the other hand, if the people cannot get protection from the murderers running wild and killing at will, why would they expect those in power to protect their hard-earned resources?
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.