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Giving indiscipline a 'bly'
Jean Lowrie-Chin
Monday, November 05, 2007
WE had a four-hour road trip last Wednesday, but it was not one of our breezy Negril outings, garnished with tangerines and pepper shrimp. No, this was a gear-grinding, foot-cramping trip from New Kingston to Constant Spring. True, there was a great deal of water from the relentless rain and some frightening potholes, but the real problem was the rank indiscipline we encountered from one corner to the next.
Jean Lowrie-Chin
Two taxicabs came through a red light, almost crashing into us as we tried to negotiate a corner. At the Pegasus exit on Knutsford Boulevard, two buses charged onto the road, bringing vehicles from both directions to a standstill. I thought of writing down the licence plate numbers - not a very bright idea when we considered that between limited resources and corruption, we had little chance of getting justice.
As we listened to last week's news stories on gang wars, stolen bridge parts(!), cost overruns, broken roads and extortion, we kept asking, "Why was it allowed to get so bad?" It seems that Jamaica has been turning into a place where being politically correct means being ethically incorrect. Don't be so hard, we're told, "'low" (allow) the man! So we sell driver's licences to illiterates, and award contracts to incompetents.
With all of this "'lowing", people who try to follow the rules become the odd ones out. A woman who had formed her own lane in Wednesday's traffic, cursed out an annoyed motorist when she was challenged. For her, the obstructive taxi drivers and the extortionists whom Ezroy Millwood estimates earn $100,000 per day, rules are tiresome and unnecessary. We have been allowing our well-armed thugs to rewrite how we conduct ourselves in Jamaica. The lady who refused to continue her testimony at the inquest into the death of Bob Woolmer, said in fear, "This is a serious country."
Traffic policing is a significant exercise in the conduct of law and order. Though motorists keep telling the police, "Leave me alone and go fight crime," the police will tell us that crime-fighting is very effectively done by diligent car checks. The only problem is the issue of trust, those cynical police officers who use the "lef' or write" ("lef' some money with me or I write you a ticket") method to sully the name of the force.
The theft of scrap metal is not a recent phenomenon, as some of our top utility companies have estimates in the tens of millions of loss to this practice over recent years. Kudos to Industry and Commerce Minister Karl Samuda for taking such immediate steps to address the matter. As he mentioned, if we're not careful, they will soon be cutting the burglar bars from our windows. This is why we put people in Parliament, to inform themselves of our problems and move speedily with effective measures to address them.
After the past days' rain, there is even more genuine suffering in this country.
While we work seriously towards skills training and poverty alleviation, we must never fail to call a thief a thief. To do otherwise would be an insult to the honest poor people of this country, who have made untold sacrifices to educate their children without grumbling that "nutten nah gwaan". Do our politicians continue to blame unemployment and poverty for crime in order to protect some of their henchmen? Have they encouraged this dependency mentality so they can buy votes easily?
After the past days' rain, there is even more genuine suffering in this country, especially among the good rural folks who have been tilling the soil to earn a living, travelling long hours to get to their jobs. We see them inching over swinging bridges, an old man being carried on his son's shoulders. It should have dawned on us that our environmentalists were right after all, in their concern about deforestation and respect for our river courses. Here again, we 'low coal burning, 'low squatting, 'low illegal sand mining and the most vulnerable are left defenceless against the elements.
The indiscipline we see on our roads is a symptom of a dysfunctional society - crabs in a barrel getting nowhere. There have been enough talks, enough studies, enough models. To achieve order in our society, we have to become more sincere, energetic and focused in carrying out the nation's urgent business.
Congrats, Frances Beard
Allow me to congratulate a high-achieving lady, whom I am blessed to call my sister. Frances Beard recently received the prestigious Sharing the Wealth Award from the US-based Organisational Development (OD) Network. The holder of a Master of Science degree in Organisational Development from Johns Hopkins University, Frances was lauded at the OD Network's Annual Conference in Baltimore, Maryland for "her passion for seeing 'wholes' and fostering learning communities".
Beard, a past valedictorian of Alpha Academy, has been an internal OD consultant for the 3.2 million-strong Washington-based National Education Association (NEA) for over 10 years. Her professional highlights include a complex whole-system change process in a large NEA state affiliate, spearheading an ongoing NEA-NTL OD/Systems Change certificate programme, and serving on the Board of Examiners for the US Senate Productivity and Maryland (Malcolm Baldrige) Quality Awards process.
Farewell, Beverly Adams
Beverly and Raymond 'Dixie' Adams were respected Jamaican entrepreneurs who believed in the people of Grants Pen. At one time, they owned the largest business on Grants Pen Road, Bryad Engineering, now the home of the Stella Maris Foundation. The Adams family was one of the first donors to the Foundation and Beverly continued to give her support up to a few days before her passing. At an inspiring memorial service last week, Beverly Adams was remembered as a nurturing and devout matriarch and friend. We extend condolences to her family.
lowriechin@aim.com
Jean Lowrie-Chin
Monday, November 05, 2007
WE had a four-hour road trip last Wednesday, but it was not one of our breezy Negril outings, garnished with tangerines and pepper shrimp. No, this was a gear-grinding, foot-cramping trip from New Kingston to Constant Spring. True, there was a great deal of water from the relentless rain and some frightening potholes, but the real problem was the rank indiscipline we encountered from one corner to the next.
Jean Lowrie-Chin Two taxicabs came through a red light, almost crashing into us as we tried to negotiate a corner. At the Pegasus exit on Knutsford Boulevard, two buses charged onto the road, bringing vehicles from both directions to a standstill. I thought of writing down the licence plate numbers - not a very bright idea when we considered that between limited resources and corruption, we had little chance of getting justice.
As we listened to last week's news stories on gang wars, stolen bridge parts(!), cost overruns, broken roads and extortion, we kept asking, "Why was it allowed to get so bad?" It seems that Jamaica has been turning into a place where being politically correct means being ethically incorrect. Don't be so hard, we're told, "'low" (allow) the man! So we sell driver's licences to illiterates, and award contracts to incompetents.
With all of this "'lowing", people who try to follow the rules become the odd ones out. A woman who had formed her own lane in Wednesday's traffic, cursed out an annoyed motorist when she was challenged. For her, the obstructive taxi drivers and the extortionists whom Ezroy Millwood estimates earn $100,000 per day, rules are tiresome and unnecessary. We have been allowing our well-armed thugs to rewrite how we conduct ourselves in Jamaica. The lady who refused to continue her testimony at the inquest into the death of Bob Woolmer, said in fear, "This is a serious country."
Traffic policing is a significant exercise in the conduct of law and order. Though motorists keep telling the police, "Leave me alone and go fight crime," the police will tell us that crime-fighting is very effectively done by diligent car checks. The only problem is the issue of trust, those cynical police officers who use the "lef' or write" ("lef' some money with me or I write you a ticket") method to sully the name of the force.
The theft of scrap metal is not a recent phenomenon, as some of our top utility companies have estimates in the tens of millions of loss to this practice over recent years. Kudos to Industry and Commerce Minister Karl Samuda for taking such immediate steps to address the matter. As he mentioned, if we're not careful, they will soon be cutting the burglar bars from our windows. This is why we put people in Parliament, to inform themselves of our problems and move speedily with effective measures to address them.
After the past days' rain, there is even more genuine suffering in this country. While we work seriously towards skills training and poverty alleviation, we must never fail to call a thief a thief. To do otherwise would be an insult to the honest poor people of this country, who have made untold sacrifices to educate their children without grumbling that "nutten nah gwaan". Do our politicians continue to blame unemployment and poverty for crime in order to protect some of their henchmen? Have they encouraged this dependency mentality so they can buy votes easily?
After the past days' rain, there is even more genuine suffering in this country, especially among the good rural folks who have been tilling the soil to earn a living, travelling long hours to get to their jobs. We see them inching over swinging bridges, an old man being carried on his son's shoulders. It should have dawned on us that our environmentalists were right after all, in their concern about deforestation and respect for our river courses. Here again, we 'low coal burning, 'low squatting, 'low illegal sand mining and the most vulnerable are left defenceless against the elements.
The indiscipline we see on our roads is a symptom of a dysfunctional society - crabs in a barrel getting nowhere. There have been enough talks, enough studies, enough models. To achieve order in our society, we have to become more sincere, energetic and focused in carrying out the nation's urgent business.
Congrats, Frances Beard
Allow me to congratulate a high-achieving lady, whom I am blessed to call my sister. Frances Beard recently received the prestigious Sharing the Wealth Award from the US-based Organisational Development (OD) Network. The holder of a Master of Science degree in Organisational Development from Johns Hopkins University, Frances was lauded at the OD Network's Annual Conference in Baltimore, Maryland for "her passion for seeing 'wholes' and fostering learning communities".
Beard, a past valedictorian of Alpha Academy, has been an internal OD consultant for the 3.2 million-strong Washington-based National Education Association (NEA) for over 10 years. Her professional highlights include a complex whole-system change process in a large NEA state affiliate, spearheading an ongoing NEA-NTL OD/Systems Change certificate programme, and serving on the Board of Examiners for the US Senate Productivity and Maryland (Malcolm Baldrige) Quality Awards process.
Farewell, Beverly Adams
Beverly and Raymond 'Dixie' Adams were respected Jamaican entrepreneurs who believed in the people of Grants Pen. At one time, they owned the largest business on Grants Pen Road, Bryad Engineering, now the home of the Stella Maris Foundation. The Adams family was one of the first donors to the Foundation and Beverly continued to give her support up to a few days before her passing. At an inspiring memorial service last week, Beverly Adams was remembered as a nurturing and devout matriarch and friend. We extend condolences to her family.
lowriechin@aim.com