Jamaica’s Incompetent Legislators:

The Kingston and Saint Andrew cor­po­ra­tion has been com­plain­ing about ille­gal build­ing in the Kingston and Saint Andrew areas which falls under its sphere of respon­si­bil­i­ty. Interestingly the Mayor of the cor­po­ra­tion Desmond McKenzie is a coun­cil­lor from Tivoli Gardens the epic cen­ter of JLP pol­i­tics and heart of Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s west Kingston Constituency.

If the Mayor as head of the coun­cil, and a close ally of the Prime min­is­ter ‚can­not get the ille­gal build­ing to stop , what chance is there for a res­o­lu­tion to this prob­lem? The truth is Jamaicans were gen­er­al­ly nev­er required to seek gov­ern­men­tal approval for build­ing their homes or oth­er struc­tures, how­ev­er as we move into becom­ing a devel­oped coun­try, we real­ized we have to adhere to codes that are uni­ver­sal with a view to sav­ing lives and ensure rel­a­tive safety.

The prob­lem in Jamaica’s case is that Jamaican laws have not kept pace with the times and as such there is no incen­tive to obey the archa­ic exist­ing laws.

In these blogs we have sought to point this out as it relates to the issue of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty. This prob­lem is how­ev­er not con­fined to crim­i­nal law , but oth­er areas of the laws to include those that cov­ers build­ing con­struc­tion or the pro­tec­tion of tourists com­ing off cruise ships.

McKenzie

Surprisingly The Council’s Mayor told the Jamaica Gleaner that the reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing build­ing con­struc­tion are woe­ful­ly inef­fec­tive, result­ing in many play­ers in the con­struc­tion indus­try ignor­ing the KSAC orders to cease and desist.

Finally a state­ment of truth or com­mon sense from a politi­cian. We have been shout­ing this for years. The rea­son we have the lev­el of crime and dis­re­spect for the rule of law is sim­ply because the laws are old and use­less, and the penal­ties assigned inef­fec­tu­al as deterrent.

This offers us a per­fect segue into anoth­er prob­lem in the heart of the coun­try. The issue of tourist harass­ment in resort towns like Ocho Rios. Nothing new by the way, but some­thing left unchecked, because the mon­ey the cash cow brings in still rolls in.

President of the St Ann Chamber of Commerce, Kumar Sujanani, com­plained that the police were not imple­ment­ing the Prescribed Areas Act, even while the com­plaints of tourist harass­ment per­sist­ed. According to Sujananai, the com­plaint was top of the list from cruise pas­sen­gers who dis­em­bark in Ocho Rios. But accord­ing to Superintendent of Police at Area Two head­quar­ters, Gary Griffiths, who was for­mer­ly in charge of St Ann, the police had, in fact, imple­ment­ed the act in an area stretch­ing from Island Village to Pineapple Place, effec­tive­ly cov­er­ing the major­i­ty of the resort town. Superintendent Griffiths said the mea­sure was dis­con­tin­ued due to non-coöper­a­tion and com­plaints by mer­chants, espe­cial­ly those on Main Street, the main shop­ping area in Ocho Rios.

Here we have peo­ple with pow­er and influ­ence blam­ing the police for doing some­thing the police has very lit­tle pow­er to control. 

Rather than use what influ­ence he has individually,or that of the Chamber he heads, to lob­by Government to pass tougher leg­is­la­tion that would effec­tive­ly deal with the issue of tourist harass­ment, he seeks to lam­bast the police the tra­di­tion­al scapegoat .

From the look on the face of Superintendent Griffith’s face I can see he would like to tell this clown where to go with his nonsense.

As a young con­sta­ble sta­tioned at the Mobile Reserve in St Andrew I spent count­less hours with my col­leagues com­bat­ting the issue of tourist harass­ment in towns like Ocho Rios and Montego Bay. Despite count­less hours of patrol time, thou­sands of arrests, and untold phys­i­cal con­fronta­tions with ped­dlers drug-deal­ers and hus­tlers the prob­lem persisted.

Which must lead to a com­pre­hen­sive review of the reason/​s behind the fail­ure of this project.

If peo­ple are arrest­ed , over and over , and over , yet they per­sist in doing what they did that keep get­ting them arrest­ed, then the blind can see that the prob­lem is with the penal­ty. As is the case with all areas of crim­i­nal­i­ty in Jamaica there are inad­e­quate and archa­ic penal­ties assigned to these crimes .

The truth is some offend­ers were arrest­ed dozens of times each month and released some­times with­out even pay­ing a fine.

No one is sug­gest­ing that peo­ple look­ing to make a few bucks from sell­ing trin­kets be impris­oned for life . What we are say­ing is there must be an under­stand­ing that tourists come to our shores with mon­ey to spend, they deserve to be treat­ed with respect,as we would like to be treat­ed , we should also make sure that the tourism dol­lar not be con­fined to rich hote­liers and busi­ness peo­ple, but must be avail­able to the gen­er­al populace.

There must also be a cumu­la­tive penal­ty that says if you get caught com­mit­ting this offense, after a cer­tain amount of times prefer­ably three (3) you are going to jail for a year.

I guar­an­tee this prob­lem would go away,vendors and ped­dlers would sell in des­ig­nat­ed spaces pro­vid­ed for them.

There has got to be order oth­er­wise it’s chaos , what’s hap­pen­ing now and has been so for decades, it is the drip , drip, slow death of Jamaica’s Tourist industry.

The rise in num­ber of oth­er Caribbean Islands as legit­i­mate tourism des­ti­na­tions is proof pos­i­tive that the coun­try’s tourism prod­uct is get­ting tired and stale. Crime vio­lence and harass­ment to vis­i­tors has con­densed the prod­uct itself ‚lit­er­al­ly rel­e­gat­ing it to all-inclu­sive resorts, with vis­i­tors not get­ting a chance to see the coun­try, and prob­a­bly for the better.

Many cruise ship pas­sen­ger con­fide in me that when docked in Jamaica the stay on board, usu­al­ly out of fear.

There must be a gen­er­al con­sid­er­a­tion for the inter­est of every­one when plans are being draft­ed for Cruise ship ports. These must take into con­sid­er­a­tion craft shops , restau­rants, etc. Essentially they must con­tain a direct com­po­nent that ben­e­fits aver­age Jamaicans over and above the gen­er­al ben­e­fits derived from tax dol­lars collected.

Each per­son with a con­tri­bu­tion should feel he or she may ben­e­fit from what­ev­er they have to offer. there must how­ev­er be a dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between offer­ing a gen­uine prod­uct in a con­trolled and des­ig­nat­ed locale, against push­ing trin­kets into the faces of peo­ple com­ing off a ship demand­ing they buy them, that to most peo­ple is tan­ta­mount to soft extortion.

People will buy what they want because they want to buy it, not because some­one forces it on them, or intim­i­dates them into buy­ing some­thing that at its gen­e­sis , was always going to be an impulse, dis­cre­tionary purchase.

A friend of mine, a female police offi­cer in the States, told me of a hor­ror inci­dent she and her hus­band encoun­tered in Montego Bay when they refused the advances of a sell­er of trin­kets to pur­chase a piece of trin­ket he pushed on them. The inci­dent she relat­ed esca­lat­ed into threats and ver­bal abuse , which cul­mi­nat­ed with a machete being pulled on them , forc­ing oth­er ven­dors to inter­vene on their behalf. Needless to say they will nev­er be back to Jamaica.

We know that bad news gets dis­sem­i­nat­ed four times faster than good news does, so we have to con­clude that soon­er or lat­er this will invari­ably catch up to the Jamaica tourism indus­try, and the coun­try in gen­er­al. Legislators must acknowl­edge that our laws are old , use­less, and inef­fec­tive, this has had a crip­pling effect on the coun­try’s jus­tice sys­tem because of recidi­vism, and a dev­as­tat­ing over­all effect on our coun­try. Law mak­ers must do some­thing about over­haul­ing our laws, instead of spend­ing their time bang­ing on desks and shout­ing child­ish insults at each other.

Asking this of them may how­ev­er be too much to expect from the losers that make up the coun­try’s polit­i­cal leadership.

mike beckles:

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