Jamaica gives CAL one-month deadline

[Exile]

led delegation: Vasant Bharath





Jamaica gives CAL one-month deadline





Story Updated: Jun 19, 2013 at 10:02 PM ECT

l KINGSTON

Jamaica has given the new board of Trinidad-based Caribbean Airlines (CAL) a month to indicate how it intends to use the Air Jamaica brand in the future.
Jamaica Transport Minister Dr Omar Davies on Tuesday met with a high-level delegation from Trinidad and Tobago that included Trade Minister Vasant Bharath and CAL board members to discuss the airline’s Jamai*can operations and its arrears to local entities, including the Customs Department and the Airports Authority of Jamaica.
The meeting also discussed the status of the Air Jamaica brand amid reports that the Portia Simpson-Miller administration had threa*tened to withdraw the Air Jamai*ca brand from CAL, in the wake of a recent decision to cut back on the number of flights to Jamaica.
“We discussed the reduction in the number of flights between North America and Jamaica and the way forward,” Davies said, adding, “rela*ted to that was the continuing use of the Air Jamaica brand name”.
Davies said the new CAL board, which came into office last month, had been “given a month to come back to us with a specific development, in terms of the way forward”.
With regard to CAL’s debt to Jamaican entities, it was agreed that the airline will in the future remain within agreed credit limits, and Davies said that during the high-level meeting, complaints regarding the hiring of Jamaican employees by Caribbean Airlines were placed before the T&T officials.
In April, Davies said he was concerned about what he cited as the “discriminatory hiring practices” of CAL after 15 flight attendants’ positions were cut at the airline’s Jamaican oper*a*tions and some Jamai*can pilots, based in Trinidad, were sent home in March.

[Historian]

Idiots!

Jamaica has given the new board of Trinidad-based Caribbean Airlines (CAL) a month to indicate how it intends to use the Air Jamaica brand in the future.
Jamaica Transport Minister Dr Omar Davies on Tuesday met with a high-level delegation from Trinidad and Tobago

Joke of the year! Can you imagine giving our brand new colonial masters deadline for anything? F_ucking jokers!

Jokes for days!

[HL]

Wa-chit Historian!!!

You can be disfellowshiped and ask to leave the congregation.

Leave all swearing to me. I am a noted back-slider.

The gall of setting deadlines on people who know how run things better than them......

BTW: you missed a question I directed at you earlier.

Just wanted to know based on the Jamaican pictures posted earlier...do you think that Jamaica infrastructure has improved?

NOTE: I did cut and paste a reply you made (from that same thread), and attached it to one of status quo Mosiah's hog-wash.

Watch your lips Historian!

[Historian]

Infrastructural Development Post-1962

BTW: you missed a question I directed at you earlier.

Just wanted to know based on the Jamaican pictures posted earlier...do you think that Jamaica infrastructure has improved?

NOTE: I did cut and paste a reply you made (from that same thread), and attached it to one of status quo Mosiah's hog-wash.

HL: You must be careful not to confuse small, short-term projects (which, ultimately, benefit mainly the politicians), with major infrastructural development. Land reform is the most glaring failure since independence, as evidenced in the report in parliament a few years ago which revealed that more than a quarter of Jamaicans live in squatter conditions.

So, what are the positives in infrastructure development? I will now try to answer your question as it relates to the post-1962 period.

Highway 2000 immediately comes to mind. The, there is also the liberalization of the telecommunications sector starting in the 1990s and before that, the rural electrification program of the 1970s.

Recently, we have had the partnership between the Jamaican and Chinese governments which resulted in the Jamaica Development Infrastructure Programme (JDIP). This is concerned with roads, bridges, drainage, etc. Note, however, that this is very recent, having started in 2010, and will last for five years. We will be better to adequately access the success of this in 2015.

The Urban Development Corporation (UDC) has been in existence for almost 50 years, having been founded during the early period of the Hugh Shearer government. The most impressive of the UDC projects, in my opinion, are probably the development of the Kingston waterfront and also Caymanas in St Catherine. The UDC is also responsible for shopping centers such as the impressive Ocean Villa Shopping Centre in Ocho Rios.

The other major infrastructure developments that I can think of, aside from Highway 2000, are the North Coast Highway, the expansion of cruise shipping facilities in Falmouth and elsewhere, the developing of the strip of highway leading to the Palisadoes Airport, and some outstanding roads in Kingston, for example Washington Boulevard and Dunrobin Avenue. Of course, I have to include reservoirs for water provision, but our governments get a failing grade from me for the glaring failure to increase storage facilities so as to match the burgeoning population in the urban areas.

Projects such as school building and improvement of police infrastructure have been ploddingly taking place over the decades, but have clearly lagged well behind today’s needs.

This post is about infrastructure, so I won’t touch on topics like the unceasing steady decline of agriculture (in particular export crops) since independence, the gradual erosion of personal rights through a culture of squatting, ubiquitous loud music, the overwhelming reliance on hustling as a means of survival, the failure of the manufacturing sector, the failure of creating true development via the bauxite levy of the 1970s, etc.

Land reform, though, is probably the most glaring of the numerous failures. Likewise, the NHT was a commendable idea, but MORE than three quarters of contributors do NOT benefit in any way!