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NEWS IN BRIEF
FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION
Top News in the Print Media: The JIS, The Gleaner & The Observer
From the Overseas Department, Jamaica Information Service
Wednesday October 15, 2003
10-YEAR TOURISM PLAN BEGINS NOV
The Observer: Jamaica will, in November, launch the first phase of its 10-year developmental plan for the tourism industry, the funding having already been approved by cabinet.
Tourism Minister, Aloun N'Dombet Assamba told participants at last week's closing ceremony of the international trade expo that the first phase involving the cleaning-up and beautifying of major resort areas will begin in November -- ahead of the start of the winter tourist season on December 15.
"These operations will be carried out by the ministries and agencies with responsibilities for such tasks, but monitored by the resort boards in each region," she said.
SPOT MARKET WEIGHTED AVERAGE RATE
CURRENCY -- PURCHASES -- SALES
___US$_______59.7286_____60.0242
__CAN$_______44.1497_____44.8411
___GB£_______98.1718_____99.5241
PT. ANTONIO EXPECTS 5,000 VISITORS
The Observer: Over 5,000 cruise passengers are expected to visit Port Antonio during the 2003/2004 winter tourism season, signalling, officials hope, the beginning of a rebound in the fortunes of the still sleepy resort.
The planned visits from some of the world's most luxurious mid-sized cruise liners, are the result, officials say, of the investment undertaken in the docking facilities last year.
"Almost two years of aggressive marketing efforts by the Port Authority of Jamaica have begun to pay dividends," says William Tatham, vice-president of cruise shipping and marina operations, at the Port Authority of Jamaica (PAJ).
Over the past few years, the PAJ has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in creating a marina and upgrading other porting facilities in an effort to woo yacht and cruise passengers to the town.
SEVEN NAMED IN PRIDE FRAUD
The Gleaner: The Criminal Investigation Bureau in Kingston has got the go-ahead to execute arrest warrants on seven persons that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has ruled against in the National Housing Development Corporation (NHDC) fraud case.
The case involves the misappropriation of some $450 million.
According to the police, over 80 charges are to be executed on the seven in relation to offences, including forgery, uttering, demanding property, conspiracy, obtaining money by false pretence in respect of the Melbrook Heights, St. Benedict Heights, Morant Farm and Riverton City NHDC/Operation Pride projects.
CHANGING ROOMS FOR STADIUM EAST
The Observer: Cabinet has approved the award of a US $838,286.93 million contract to construct bleachers seating and toilet/ changing room facilities at the Stadium East Field, Independence Park in Kingston and at the GC Foster College, St Catherine.
Information Minister Burchell Whiteman made the announcement Monday at the weekly post-Cabinet news briefing at Jamaica House.
Funding for the project, he said, is covered under the San Jose Accord between Jamaica, Mexico and Venezuela, with the loan period extended to December 31, 2003.
HALF WAY TREE CLOCK GOES DIGITAL
The Observer: After a $2 million renovation which included the installation of a Global Positioning System traceable digital clock and electronic chiming system, the Half Way Tree Clock was officially unveiled to the public yesterday.
At exactly 7:30 am on World Standards Day, the clock emitted strains of the Jamaican folk tune, Day O, showing off a new feature that allows different chimes to be programmed into the national monument which now has a second hand.
The renovation is part of the Bureau of Standards Jamaica's plan to upgrade five public clocks across the island as it moves to standardise the nation's time. There are plans to renovate clocks in May Pen, Clarendon; Savanna-la-mar in Westmoreland; Ocho Rios in St Ann as well as Montego Bay, St James.
Work on the Half Way Tree Clock was completed in collaboration with the Jamaica National Heritage Trust as well as the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation.
EXCELSIOR FOUNDING PRINCIPAL DIES
The Gleaner: Thomas Edward 'Ted' Dwyer, educator and founding principal of Excelsior Community College, Mountain View Avenue in Kingston died yesterday, shortly after 1 p.m. after a brief illness.
Mr. Dwyer suffered a stroke last week Friday while visiting family member in Mandeville. He was treated at the Mandeville Hospital, and later transferred to the Medical Associates Hospital in Kingston on Saturday before succumbing to his condition yesterday.
JIS NEWS
Wednesday October 15, 2003
REDUCE GAP BETWEEN NATIONS
Prime Minister P.J. Patterson has said that every effort should be made through the organisation of international trade to reduce the poverty gap between the world’s richest and poorest nations as failure to do so could hinder lasting peace in the global village.
He said that globalisation and significant improvements in technology and information flow have resulted in increased inequalities between developed and developing countries, adding that all developing countries wanted was equity and social justice in the international communities to which they belonged.
“In terms of international trade every effort has to be made to reduce the poverty gap between rich and poor countries because without that, there can be no lasting peace. People are going to fight for survival. We have to deal with the problem of hunger, disease and ignorance and we have to do it as members of one human race and one human family,” Mr. Patterson stated.
The Prime Minister who was on an official visit to South Florida was speaking on Saturday (Oct. 11) at a function held at the African American Research Library and Cultural Centre in Fort Lauderdale.
CARICOM TO BENEFIT FROM TRAINING
Over 60 candidates from selected CARICOM member countries will participate in a regional five-year training programme on the Prevention of Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases, under the joint technical project between the Ministry of Health (the Southern Regional Health Authority) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
The training programme, which will see persons from four countries selected each year, will provide CARICOM member countries with an opportunity to improve their knowledge and techniques in the field of the prevention of the chronic, non-communicable diseases - hypertension and diabetes. Participants for the first year course, which will run from January-February 2004, will be from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Grenada, and Trinidad and Tobago.
AGRI MINISTRY IMPLEMENTS PROJECTS
Minister of State for Agriculture, Errol Ennis has said a number of projects have been implemented by the Ministry to increase production of a variety of traditional and non-traditional crops, which have good local and export potential.
In a statement read by Don McGlashan, the Ministry’s Chief Technical Director, on behalf of the State Minister, it was stated that the Ministry was achieving improved agricultural production by working with farmers and forging alliances with local and external agencies.
He was speaking on Friday (October 10) at the press launch of World Food Day 2003 at the Ministry’s offices on Hope Road in Kingston. World Food Day will be observed on Thursday, October 16, under the theme: ‘International Alliance Against Hunger’.
GOVT. COMMITTED TO EMPOWERING FARMERS
Minister of State in the Ministry of Agriculture, Errol Ennis, has said that the government was committed to empowering farmers to produce more, and to do so efficiently, so that farming could become more profitable and consumers could purchase their produce at competitive prices.
"It is a cycle of progress. If you increase your production and lower your costs, you will be able to sell more, more people will be able to buy your crops and you will make more profit,” Mr. Ennis said.
He stressed that this approach was the answer to the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) mission of providing food for all in the next 10 years.
CHILDREN’S HOME TO GET DONATION
In observation of World Food Day, Thursday, October 16, the Ministry of Land and Environment and the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA), will donate tinned food items to the Best Care Children’s Home.
The presentation will take place on that day at the home, located at 11 Trevennion Road, in the Cross Roads area, at 10:00 a.m.
In an interview with JIS News, Paula Johnson, the Ministry’s Public Relations Officer said that the presentation “is a demonstration of our corporate social responsibility to the community in which we work, and our concern for the social as well as the natural environment”.
The tin food drive would continue until Christmas, at which time another donation would be made to the Children’s Home, noted Miss Johnson. At that time, in another gesture of goodwill, the home will be adopted by both NEPA and the Ministry.
Contact: Celia Lindsay
For further information about any of these news items,contact the Overseas Department at
[email protected]
. The Jamaica Information Service web page address is
www.jis.gov.jm
.Telephone: (876) 926-3740-8 / 926-3590-8, Fax: (876) 926-6715
COMMENTARY
Wednesday October 15, 2003
THE OBSERVER
FIXING NEW KINGSTON
IT is inconceivable to us that New Kingston could have been planned, sub-divisions approved and construction permits granted based on engineering designs that did not contemplate a network of storm drains.
This, after all, is a development done less than 40 years ago with the clear aim of making the area the business hub of the Jamaican capital. Indeed, many of Jamaica's leading firms have their corporate headquarters in multi-storey buildings in New Kingston.
But if what the authorities say is true, many of these complexes, especially along the busy Knutsford Boulevard strip, dispose of their waste water into shallow open drains.
The New Kingston Civic Association, which groups businesses operating in the area, as well as the health authorities and the National Works Agency are at loggerheads over this matter. The firms say they are doing all they can to manage their waste water. The NWA says they are not doing enough -- especially the fast-food restaurants that proliferate on Knutsford Boulevard.
But as both sides finger-point and procrastinate it is the Jamaican taxpayer, and the public at large, who are forced to carry the burden of this past failure in planning and present-day inertia.
Anyone who uses Knutsford Boulevard, even with only moderate frequency, can hardly have escaped the consistent damage to the roadway where it intersects with Trinidad Terrace. There, at the lowest point in the road, water settles with devastating impact. There is currently a deep and wide crater at this intersection.
As is the case every few months or so, the Jamaican taxpayer will be faced with the bill for repairing this bit of roadway.
This, however, is not the only way that the poor planning of New Kingston now affects Mr and Mrs John Public. The Knutsford Boulevard pothole is not one that is easily avoided and is often the cause of damage to vehicles which require expensive repair. It also causes frequent traffic bottlenecks which translate to many lost man-hours each day.
But importantly, too, this accumulation of water on the road poses a significant health hazard from water-borne diseases.
And truth be told, it is a nasty eyesore. But then are so many other things in New Kingston where there is, especially at night, a creeping ramshackle.
Apart from the practical concerns for health and safety and economic loss, it seems to us that we have, as a community, lost our capacity for shame. No one, it seems, is embarrassed by the deteriorating conditions in New Kingston. The increasingly dank rankness of its piazzas, the gritty roadways and its infested puddles.
We would have thought that the stakeholders, instead of bickering, would be attempting to find, and fund, a solution to a failure of the past. In any event, the government must have the overriding interest in public policy for the good of the people.
Having storm drains in an important business district is good public policy. And this ought not to be conditioned by whatever people may believe to be the obligations of New Kingston firms.
============================================
THE GLEANER
CAN PORTMORE BE SAVED?
WHEN IT was first developed there were high hopes for Portmore, the city "across the waters" as it was called, now fast becoming a blighted community plagued with a number of major problems. Some of them go back to poor original town planning which clustered too many small, low-income units into too small a land area. Roads were badly designed - too narrow and ending in cul-de-sacs which makes access by police and emergency vehicles difficult.
But even more egregious has been illegal overbuilding by residents in a wild 'keeping up with the Jones' syndrome. Many units now have an extra storey and additions to the structure are built right up to the boundary line on both sides of the lots.
Except for Edgewater, where individuals rather than developers put up houses, the original middle-class character of Portmore has deteriorated, in many areas like Braeton, infested with criminals and extremely dangerous. This is reflected in the murder rate for the South St. Catherine Police Division encompassing Portmore which stands at 67 for the year to date.
Superintendent Glenford Hudson has promised extra police bicycle and motorbike patrols, better able than motor cars to contend with the terrain, but he has already sounded a note of warning that these cannot long be sustained because his division is stretched thin.
To add to Portmore's woes there are problems with the water supply, polluted as it is with a black sludge which is clogging up the water meters and which is a serious matter if the dramatic photograph featured on the front page of The Sunday Gleaner is anything to go by. Drains and canals are not properly cleaned so that for long stretches of the year there is a plague of mosquitoes. In certain areas of Portmore, sleep is disturbed by blasting sound systems, especially on weekends, the police apparently unable or unwilling to do anything about the nuisance.
Portmore broke new ground as the first municipality directly electing its Mayor. As such it is being watched as a model for new approaches in local government. It would be unfortunate if increasing crime should hamper its social and political development.
The fateful question remains can Portmore be restored to respectable middle-class status or will it become just another ghetto community?
FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION
Top News in the Print Media: The JIS, The Gleaner & The Observer
From the Overseas Department, Jamaica Information Service
Wednesday October 15, 2003
10-YEAR TOURISM PLAN BEGINS NOV
The Observer: Jamaica will, in November, launch the first phase of its 10-year developmental plan for the tourism industry, the funding having already been approved by cabinet.
Tourism Minister, Aloun N'Dombet Assamba told participants at last week's closing ceremony of the international trade expo that the first phase involving the cleaning-up and beautifying of major resort areas will begin in November -- ahead of the start of the winter tourist season on December 15.
"These operations will be carried out by the ministries and agencies with responsibilities for such tasks, but monitored by the resort boards in each region," she said.
SPOT MARKET WEIGHTED AVERAGE RATE
CURRENCY -- PURCHASES -- SALES
___US$_______59.7286_____60.0242
__CAN$_______44.1497_____44.8411
___GB£_______98.1718_____99.5241
PT. ANTONIO EXPECTS 5,000 VISITORS
The Observer: Over 5,000 cruise passengers are expected to visit Port Antonio during the 2003/2004 winter tourism season, signalling, officials hope, the beginning of a rebound in the fortunes of the still sleepy resort.
The planned visits from some of the world's most luxurious mid-sized cruise liners, are the result, officials say, of the investment undertaken in the docking facilities last year.
"Almost two years of aggressive marketing efforts by the Port Authority of Jamaica have begun to pay dividends," says William Tatham, vice-president of cruise shipping and marina operations, at the Port Authority of Jamaica (PAJ).
Over the past few years, the PAJ has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in creating a marina and upgrading other porting facilities in an effort to woo yacht and cruise passengers to the town.
SEVEN NAMED IN PRIDE FRAUD
The Gleaner: The Criminal Investigation Bureau in Kingston has got the go-ahead to execute arrest warrants on seven persons that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has ruled against in the National Housing Development Corporation (NHDC) fraud case.
The case involves the misappropriation of some $450 million.
According to the police, over 80 charges are to be executed on the seven in relation to offences, including forgery, uttering, demanding property, conspiracy, obtaining money by false pretence in respect of the Melbrook Heights, St. Benedict Heights, Morant Farm and Riverton City NHDC/Operation Pride projects.
CHANGING ROOMS FOR STADIUM EAST
The Observer: Cabinet has approved the award of a US $838,286.93 million contract to construct bleachers seating and toilet/ changing room facilities at the Stadium East Field, Independence Park in Kingston and at the GC Foster College, St Catherine.
Information Minister Burchell Whiteman made the announcement Monday at the weekly post-Cabinet news briefing at Jamaica House.
Funding for the project, he said, is covered under the San Jose Accord between Jamaica, Mexico and Venezuela, with the loan period extended to December 31, 2003.
HALF WAY TREE CLOCK GOES DIGITAL
The Observer: After a $2 million renovation which included the installation of a Global Positioning System traceable digital clock and electronic chiming system, the Half Way Tree Clock was officially unveiled to the public yesterday.
At exactly 7:30 am on World Standards Day, the clock emitted strains of the Jamaican folk tune, Day O, showing off a new feature that allows different chimes to be programmed into the national monument which now has a second hand.
The renovation is part of the Bureau of Standards Jamaica's plan to upgrade five public clocks across the island as it moves to standardise the nation's time. There are plans to renovate clocks in May Pen, Clarendon; Savanna-la-mar in Westmoreland; Ocho Rios in St Ann as well as Montego Bay, St James.
Work on the Half Way Tree Clock was completed in collaboration with the Jamaica National Heritage Trust as well as the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation.
EXCELSIOR FOUNDING PRINCIPAL DIES
The Gleaner: Thomas Edward 'Ted' Dwyer, educator and founding principal of Excelsior Community College, Mountain View Avenue in Kingston died yesterday, shortly after 1 p.m. after a brief illness.
Mr. Dwyer suffered a stroke last week Friday while visiting family member in Mandeville. He was treated at the Mandeville Hospital, and later transferred to the Medical Associates Hospital in Kingston on Saturday before succumbing to his condition yesterday.
JIS NEWS
Wednesday October 15, 2003
REDUCE GAP BETWEEN NATIONS
Prime Minister P.J. Patterson has said that every effort should be made through the organisation of international trade to reduce the poverty gap between the world’s richest and poorest nations as failure to do so could hinder lasting peace in the global village.
He said that globalisation and significant improvements in technology and information flow have resulted in increased inequalities between developed and developing countries, adding that all developing countries wanted was equity and social justice in the international communities to which they belonged.
“In terms of international trade every effort has to be made to reduce the poverty gap between rich and poor countries because without that, there can be no lasting peace. People are going to fight for survival. We have to deal with the problem of hunger, disease and ignorance and we have to do it as members of one human race and one human family,” Mr. Patterson stated.
The Prime Minister who was on an official visit to South Florida was speaking on Saturday (Oct. 11) at a function held at the African American Research Library and Cultural Centre in Fort Lauderdale.
CARICOM TO BENEFIT FROM TRAINING
Over 60 candidates from selected CARICOM member countries will participate in a regional five-year training programme on the Prevention of Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases, under the joint technical project between the Ministry of Health (the Southern Regional Health Authority) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
The training programme, which will see persons from four countries selected each year, will provide CARICOM member countries with an opportunity to improve their knowledge and techniques in the field of the prevention of the chronic, non-communicable diseases - hypertension and diabetes. Participants for the first year course, which will run from January-February 2004, will be from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Grenada, and Trinidad and Tobago.
AGRI MINISTRY IMPLEMENTS PROJECTS
Minister of State for Agriculture, Errol Ennis has said a number of projects have been implemented by the Ministry to increase production of a variety of traditional and non-traditional crops, which have good local and export potential.
In a statement read by Don McGlashan, the Ministry’s Chief Technical Director, on behalf of the State Minister, it was stated that the Ministry was achieving improved agricultural production by working with farmers and forging alliances with local and external agencies.
He was speaking on Friday (October 10) at the press launch of World Food Day 2003 at the Ministry’s offices on Hope Road in Kingston. World Food Day will be observed on Thursday, October 16, under the theme: ‘International Alliance Against Hunger’.
GOVT. COMMITTED TO EMPOWERING FARMERS
Minister of State in the Ministry of Agriculture, Errol Ennis, has said that the government was committed to empowering farmers to produce more, and to do so efficiently, so that farming could become more profitable and consumers could purchase their produce at competitive prices.
"It is a cycle of progress. If you increase your production and lower your costs, you will be able to sell more, more people will be able to buy your crops and you will make more profit,” Mr. Ennis said.
He stressed that this approach was the answer to the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) mission of providing food for all in the next 10 years.
CHILDREN’S HOME TO GET DONATION
In observation of World Food Day, Thursday, October 16, the Ministry of Land and Environment and the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA), will donate tinned food items to the Best Care Children’s Home.
The presentation will take place on that day at the home, located at 11 Trevennion Road, in the Cross Roads area, at 10:00 a.m.
In an interview with JIS News, Paula Johnson, the Ministry’s Public Relations Officer said that the presentation “is a demonstration of our corporate social responsibility to the community in which we work, and our concern for the social as well as the natural environment”.
The tin food drive would continue until Christmas, at which time another donation would be made to the Children’s Home, noted Miss Johnson. At that time, in another gesture of goodwill, the home will be adopted by both NEPA and the Ministry.
Contact: Celia Lindsay
For further information about any of these news items,contact the Overseas Department at
[email protected]
. The Jamaica Information Service web page address is
www.jis.gov.jm
.Telephone: (876) 926-3740-8 / 926-3590-8, Fax: (876) 926-6715
COMMENTARY
Wednesday October 15, 2003
THE OBSERVER
FIXING NEW KINGSTON
IT is inconceivable to us that New Kingston could have been planned, sub-divisions approved and construction permits granted based on engineering designs that did not contemplate a network of storm drains.
This, after all, is a development done less than 40 years ago with the clear aim of making the area the business hub of the Jamaican capital. Indeed, many of Jamaica's leading firms have their corporate headquarters in multi-storey buildings in New Kingston.
But if what the authorities say is true, many of these complexes, especially along the busy Knutsford Boulevard strip, dispose of their waste water into shallow open drains.
The New Kingston Civic Association, which groups businesses operating in the area, as well as the health authorities and the National Works Agency are at loggerheads over this matter. The firms say they are doing all they can to manage their waste water. The NWA says they are not doing enough -- especially the fast-food restaurants that proliferate on Knutsford Boulevard.
But as both sides finger-point and procrastinate it is the Jamaican taxpayer, and the public at large, who are forced to carry the burden of this past failure in planning and present-day inertia.
Anyone who uses Knutsford Boulevard, even with only moderate frequency, can hardly have escaped the consistent damage to the roadway where it intersects with Trinidad Terrace. There, at the lowest point in the road, water settles with devastating impact. There is currently a deep and wide crater at this intersection.
As is the case every few months or so, the Jamaican taxpayer will be faced with the bill for repairing this bit of roadway.
This, however, is not the only way that the poor planning of New Kingston now affects Mr and Mrs John Public. The Knutsford Boulevard pothole is not one that is easily avoided and is often the cause of damage to vehicles which require expensive repair. It also causes frequent traffic bottlenecks which translate to many lost man-hours each day.
But importantly, too, this accumulation of water on the road poses a significant health hazard from water-borne diseases.
And truth be told, it is a nasty eyesore. But then are so many other things in New Kingston where there is, especially at night, a creeping ramshackle.
Apart from the practical concerns for health and safety and economic loss, it seems to us that we have, as a community, lost our capacity for shame. No one, it seems, is embarrassed by the deteriorating conditions in New Kingston. The increasingly dank rankness of its piazzas, the gritty roadways and its infested puddles.
We would have thought that the stakeholders, instead of bickering, would be attempting to find, and fund, a solution to a failure of the past. In any event, the government must have the overriding interest in public policy for the good of the people.
Having storm drains in an important business district is good public policy. And this ought not to be conditioned by whatever people may believe to be the obligations of New Kingston firms.
============================================
THE GLEANER
CAN PORTMORE BE SAVED?
WHEN IT was first developed there were high hopes for Portmore, the city "across the waters" as it was called, now fast becoming a blighted community plagued with a number of major problems. Some of them go back to poor original town planning which clustered too many small, low-income units into too small a land area. Roads were badly designed - too narrow and ending in cul-de-sacs which makes access by police and emergency vehicles difficult.
But even more egregious has been illegal overbuilding by residents in a wild 'keeping up with the Jones' syndrome. Many units now have an extra storey and additions to the structure are built right up to the boundary line on both sides of the lots.
Except for Edgewater, where individuals rather than developers put up houses, the original middle-class character of Portmore has deteriorated, in many areas like Braeton, infested with criminals and extremely dangerous. This is reflected in the murder rate for the South St. Catherine Police Division encompassing Portmore which stands at 67 for the year to date.
Superintendent Glenford Hudson has promised extra police bicycle and motorbike patrols, better able than motor cars to contend with the terrain, but he has already sounded a note of warning that these cannot long be sustained because his division is stretched thin.
To add to Portmore's woes there are problems with the water supply, polluted as it is with a black sludge which is clogging up the water meters and which is a serious matter if the dramatic photograph featured on the front page of The Sunday Gleaner is anything to go by. Drains and canals are not properly cleaned so that for long stretches of the year there is a plague of mosquitoes. In certain areas of Portmore, sleep is disturbed by blasting sound systems, especially on weekends, the police apparently unable or unwilling to do anything about the nuisance.
Portmore broke new ground as the first municipality directly electing its Mayor. As such it is being watched as a model for new approaches in local government. It would be unfortunate if increasing crime should hamper its social and political development.
The fateful question remains can Portmore be restored to respectable middle-class status or will it become just another ghetto community?