The Odds Of Survival For Some In Jamaica

A recent Article in one of Jamaica’s Daily tells the sto­ry of the hard­ships Jamaicans face just to put food on the table. Though Gambling is noth­ing new in Jamaica, as a child most Jamaicans will recall the Numbers game called (drop-pan, in some communities.

Even though some peo­ple will still tell you they gam­bled back then as a means of sub­sis­tence, from the Observer’s reporting

peo­ple are doing so much more than before.

To win at the num­bers back in the day one had to guess what num­ber the Banker decid­ed on(played , the num­bers ranged from 1 to 36 , Subscribers to this scheme had a 1 in 36 chance of win­ning. I’m unsure whether the same for­mat is used today, but a 1 in 36 chance is not exact­ly good odds for feed­ing one’s fam­i­ly, or send­ing one’s chil­dren to School.

Gambling was nev­er an alien con­cept to Jamaicans, nei­ther would it be fair to attribute the prac­tice to any Political par­ty. What is lam­en­ta­ble is that the Jamaican peo­ple have allowed lies , decep­tion, dis­trac­tions, and catchy phras­es to cause so many of them lo sur­vive, far below the pover­ty lev­el. They vir­tu­al­ly have a 1 in 36 chance of eat­ing each day. Eating is nec­es­sary for sur­vival. It would not be a far reach to sug­gest that for more and more Jamaicans, the chance of sur­vival is 1 in 36 on a dai­ly basis. And that is not count­ing the crit­i­cal crime situation.

We sim­ply have to do bet­ter for our peo­ple, and as a peo­ple. It’s sad to see Jamaicans liv­ing this way, yet as soon as elec­tion time comes around they go back and elect over­whelm­ing­ly, the same band of thieves who rob them.

They not only rob them blind and enrich them­selves they award them­selves and their friends medals and National Honors for doing it.

By the way what are one of those worth these days? Over the last three decades National Honors and Awards were giv­en out for polit­i­cal crony­ism. This is a National dis­grace. It is a tremen­dous dis-ser­vice to those who earned and deserved to be rec­og­nized for giv­ing mer­i­to­ri­ous ser­vice to Country.

The harm brought onto our Country by the PNP is at this time irre­versible in our life­time. One won­ders when will the peo­ple final­ly real­ize they do not have to live that way?