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JAM | Jan 12, 2025

Sunday Sips with HG Helps | A solid waste of time

/ Our Today

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It had to take relatively new chairman of the National Solid Waste Management Authority, retired police commissioner Owen Ellington to come up with the suggestion that garbage ought to be collected at times when crews do not interfere with traffic flow.

For several years, so many of us have been saying the same thing about collection of garbage and fixing of roads, yet, no one who could have made the change possible, decided to do anything about it.

There is hope now that Ellington, being chairman of a state agency that has not distinguished itself over the years, can follow through on that suggestion, now that he is in a position of authority.

Collecting garbage, or solid waste as the sophisticated want to call it, cannot be compared with doing reconstructive surgery. It does, however, have its intricacies, and there are matters that should be focused on that require technical know-how.

Over the years, running the day-to-day activities of the NSWMA has been largely entrusted to party favourites. It is no less the case in respect of the present managing director, Audley Gordon, who is a former councillor in the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation, and an activist of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party. Gordon is a nice man and quite amiable. But based upon what we have been exposed to so far, he does not understand waste disposal management.

Owen Ellington, chairman of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA). (Photo: JIS)

Yes, he is the holder of a Master’s degree. However, managing waste is no simple thing. Over the years, I can recall only one individual who has led the NSWMA, one Anna Treasure, who had training in that field.

Now, Gordon remains in the hot seat, and the results that we have been seeing have fallen short of the mark. I remember not so long ago when the waste agency, in many cases, was being criticised here, there and everywhere for failing to pick up people’s trash for weeks, in some cases months. Gordon was blaming the shortage of garbage trucks as the main culprit. But then came scores of spanking new trucks from sources overseas, and there was skinning of teeth that the pickup drought would have ended. Not so. The situation in many cases, got worse. So what, or who else can be blamed?

The NSWMA had better shape itself up, lest it becomes more in the eyes of the public as a grand waste of time.

Rolling the pitch for farmers is the way to go

For several years, the farmers of Jamaica have had to compete with countless internal and external factors to get their products sold.

A St Elizabeth farmer at work in the field with bags of Irish potatoes.

The main internal issues relate to praedial larceny, which has been addressed by this column before; the high cost of fertilizer, and especially when there is a glut, the challenges in marketing their products.

Last week the matter of cushioning the burden on farmers came up again, with the Opposition People’s National Party spokesman on agriculture, Dr Dayton Campbell, suggesting that should his party win the next general election due by September of this year, it would examine the possibility of directing some of the taxes that the Government now rake in from imported food items, into a dedicated fund that would support farmers.

The matter of importing so many things that local farmers used to produce in huge volumes, must be placed under the microscope.

Jamaica’s food import bill was around US$2 billion last calendar year, and while foods that come in are taxed, they continue to swamp the market and give local farmers more hell than they can take.

In this age, Jamaica, having access to so many hectares of land formerly used to grow sugar cane and banana, and those that bauxite companies have now rejected, should not be taking in so much from overseas.

Anyone who tells me that Jamaica cannot grow enough onion, carrot, tomato, Irish (table) potato, red kidney bean, lettuce, cabbage, among others, is not worth listening to.

An assortment of commonly sought spices, ground provisions and vegetables sold at any market in Jamaica. (Photo: YouTube.com)

I can see with potatoes that make French fries for the fast-food trade, as that variety is at war with Jamaica soil temperatures; and the same goes for garlic, but there must be an about turn with the others, and more, mentioned earlier.

Food security is crucial, and local farmers must be given the tools to produce. They are the ones who must benefit from support, like most, if not all countries in the European Union do for their farmers. 

Jamaica must subsidise the cost of production, offer lower interest rates from, like People’s Cooperative banks, and even give them a push to go for the export market, after satisfying the demands of the domestic.

Scarce foreign exchange is being used to bring in food, some of them substandard, when that money could be used to shore up farmers who can get the job done, provided they have the tools to do it.

A necessary move by the PNP

One of the weaknesses of political parties is that they often do not want to put in the best candidate available for a constituency or division.

Instead, parties rely on who is close to the top brass, oftentime flushing the ability of others down the drain to make cushions for loyalists.

The Opposition PNP issued a news release at the end of last week, which stated that its candidate in Kingston Central, had been withdrawn.

Lawrence Rowe (don’t mix him up with the outstanding Jamaica and West Indies cricketer who turned 76 two days before the announcement) was always a political misfit in that seat, and I often wonder what took the party so long to get its collective transmission in gear.

Lawrence Rowe. (Photo: Facebook @rohanhayle)

It is a time when both parties that face the polls in a meaningful way, should be going for the best available, and Rowe is not in that lot that inspires any confidence of one who is capable of standing up and facing any form of hostile or intimidatory bowling.

Word on the corner is that a high-profile individual with national security training is the frontrunner to wear the party’s colours in a seat that has been represented by stalwarts like Michael Manley, Ralph Brown and Ronnie Thwaites before, but I have heard that many times over. So, we wait and see if it will materialise.

It would be a good move by the party, but the house cleaning must not stop there. 

I note, for example, that Joan Gordon Webley is the party’s preferred choice in St Andrew West Rural. How that will turn out among party diehards in respect of her ties to the Jamaica Labour Party in national elections before, is another thing, as scores of influential individuals in the area have told me that they will not be supporting her.

Much of those feelings follow the tension that gripped the populace in the bloody election of 1980, when Gordon Webley’s first opponent in St Andrew East Rural, Roy McGann, was killed by an inspector of police in Gordon Town square, St Andrew East Rural which he represented, following a clash of PNP and JLP supporters in the early morning of October 14.

It was determined by a commission of inquiry that the fatal bullet came from the gun of the inspector, following a ballistics examination.

Tension among veterans lingers to this day, as McGann’s bodyguard, special corporal Errol Whyte also died at the scene, and three others were wounded.

McGann, interestingly a parliamentary secretary in the ministry of national security at the time, was the first Government official to die violently in an election campaign.

A look across the land of ‘green’ suggests that the ruling JLP appears ready to open the curtains on others who have not distinguished themselves at the national level.

We had heard that the cantankerous Everald Warmington would not make the 63-member squad for 2025, but all that has changed, for him to dish out more undigestible meals on the society.

Unconfirmed reports too, suggest that the undisputed champion of womenbeaters, George Wright, will be saddling up for the JLP again in Westmoreland Central. Sad if that were to be true.

Member of Parliament (MP) for Westmoreland Central, George Wright, delivering his contribution to the 2023/24 State of the Constituency Debate in the House of Representatives on November 29, 2023. (Photo: JIS)

There are others on the list, but more later.

A slap for Windies Test cricket coach

The argument put forward by West Indies’ Director of Cricket Miles Bascombe as to why Daren Sammy will replace Andre Coley as coach of the West Indies’ Test team is as foolish as he always sounds.

Bascombe said on a Barbados radio programme last week, that Coley had fallen short of the mark regarding the achievements of the team, adding that Sammy had done better with the targets set in limited overs cricket, and that Cricket West Indies believes that he would outshine Coley in the longer version.

Maybe Bascombe could stop to think of some of the issues that have been dogging the Test team in recent years and then he could come to his senses.

The matter of selecting the bottom of the barrel from among the players available, for such a long time; the question of having someone captaining the team, Kraigg Brathwaite, who knows nothing about tactics, who bats slower than a snail, and whose average is worth hiding, are two of the main factors clouding the team’s fortunes.

If Sammy does not take steps to address those first, then, he too, will become another negative statistic. And Bascombe will try and find other excuses to make himself look good.

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