Nine years in the same position is not so bad if the goods are being produced by the individual charged to make things happen positively, and progressively.

But when you see deterioration year after year, then the logical thing to do is to stop the bleeding and move to place someone else in that position so that there can be the improvement which was first envisaged.

The case of Dr Christopher Tufton, minister of health and wellness, continues to be the most baffling.  

The general deterioration in some cases, and decline of health care services during his nine-year tenure places into perspective one basic question: Why is he still minister?

The latest punch in the gut for Jamaica came last Wednesday evening (January 15), when American tourist Modibo Diakite, who was visiting an all-inclusive hotel in Montego Bay, told TVJ News one of the hell tales that thousands of Jamaicans have been confronted with for so long.

He fell ill at the resort, an injury that led to bleeding from the chin, we are told. For attention by the hotel’s nurse, he had to pay US$65.

He was discouraged from going to any public medical facility nearby for follow-up treatment, and it’s a good thing that he was not taken to Cornwall Regional Hospital, Noel Holmes Hospital, or Falmouth General Hospital, for he would have exposed himself to the kind of psychological pain, in addition to the physical one that the natives know only too well.

So, the recommendation was that he should go to a private medical facility, Hospiten in Montego Bay… there he was asked to pay US$665 before he could even tell a doctor good afternoon. He had health insurance, but the institution refused to accept it.

I don’t know how things worked out eventually, but the visitor was not pleased and a follow-up question would have to be asked: Who would be?

In the end, Diakite said he would visit Jamaica again, but cautioned that “they”, meaning health officials, “need to fix the system.”

You see, had there been an effective public health system, there would not be a need for a private intervention.

Cornwall Regional is still going through an endless French domino game, with billions of dollars being spent on its repair or refurbishing, when experts had suggested that it should have been rebuilt, and would have saved Jamaica so much money, that another hospital could have been put up elsewhere and both ventures would have still cost less than what has been spent so far on the phantom repairs.

Lucky for Jamaica, it must be emphasised, that Diakite did not insist on going to a public hospital, for Jamaica would have been exposed to the kind of media warfare that it can ill-afford at this time.

Can you imagine him going to Cornwall Regional to treat the wound? What if he had met a friend who told him to go on a two-hour drive to Kingston Public Hospital, the largest, but worst of its kind anywhere this side of the globe?

First of all, his accent would not have mattered, and even a call by Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett would not have granted him any special favours.

He would have sat on an uncomfortable chair for long and go through the frustrating process of waiting to see a doctor which would materialise in no less than eight hours.

KPH, the king of suffering, is one of those that Tufton must pay special attention to, if the pain of so many is to ease. But has he been doing that over the past nine years?

My latest encounter with KPH was in early July 2024, which I really hope to be my last. It was days before Hurricane Beryl struck. I had taken my 83-year-old aunt, physically challenged, to the institution to seek treatment for a swollen foot.

She had served KPH as a nurse for 37 years, and due to bureaucratic bungling has never received a dollar in pension payment. 

She arrived there around 11:00 that morning, and finally got a bed on a ward at 10:30 pm, having had to spend that long time waiting on nurses and doctors to do their job.

The nurses on the ward were so disrespectful to patients, including herself, that it forced one to wonder if you were in a half-bombed-out place in Gaza.

My aunt was so disgusted by the system at the hospital that she served with distinction and utter commitment, that she took her own discharge and left by early morning, vowing never to return to a place where she had spent all her professional life. It is that system that prevails today that Dr Tufton has failed to straighten out.

There are too many horror stories that have dogged the health system that is more than enough evidence for Dr Tufton to have left town long ago.

Government influencers have managed to keep him there all this time, while Prime Minister Andrew Holness struggles to grin and bear it all.

It has to stop. It must stop. At this stage, not even Market Me or ‘Market He’ can save Dr Tufton’s image.

Delroy Chuck has lost it

What is the matter with Minister of Justice Delroy Chuck?

Why does the justice minister continue to make an ass of himself with statements that have left people thinking if he is all stable?

By advising legislators to withhold information from the Integrity Commission on their spouses and children when filing their annual declarations, Chuck was trying to set a dangerous precedent – that some people ought not to follow the law.

Section 40 of the Integrity Commission Act requires public officials to declare their assets and those of their spouses and offspring in most cases; notable exceptions being, among other points, if the spouses are estranged or if children are over age 18 and have gone on to start their own families.

So why is Chuck behaving like this?

Here is a man who may be considered extraordinary. He is the closest thing to being what you might call a model member of parliament, even if, geographically, and by population size, he has one of the smallest of the 63 seats in the House of Representatives.

Over the years of Chuck’s stay in the House, his work has brought him love and admiration. I know. I once lived in St Andrew North Eastern, where he has ruled the roost for 28 years, and at 74, is likely to contest the seat again later this year.

Chuck is also a brilliant man, so it is quite puzzling that he went off on a tangent on such a delicate matter at a time like this.

Apart from being an outstanding graduate of Kingston College, one who has contributed significantly to the school in monetary and other terms for several years, he is also a Rhodes Scholar and an attorney-at-law who can go toe-to-toe with anyone when it comes to interpretating the law in almost every area. But buffoonery on his part cannot be excused.

Maybe his latest bout of foot-in-mouth disease could be put down to him having a bit more sweetener than usual in his hot beverage. That ‘ignorant’ comment, according to the Integrity Commission, was quite unfortunate.

Chuck’s performance, henceforth, should be carefully monitored, lest he slip up again. Should that happen, whatever he is drinking should be discarded and a different prescription issued that will bring about more sober results.

Wasting time on Lawrence Rowe

The last few days have shown what kind of individual Lawrence Rowe is.

The former People’s National Party caretaker for Kingston Central has been so uninspiring in his verbal strokeplay, which makes you wonder what his original motive was.

Here is a man who was replaced by the party that he vowed to support, and he chose to take his laundry on the road and make it even murkier in unclean water. A party has the right to replace a candidate anytime it wants to, but in the case of Rowe, he obviously believes that he has a God-given right to cling on to something that he is not qualified to handle.

And to think of it, the only people I see making noise over his removal are the members of his social club who have nothing else to do than try to build a mountain out of a mole hill.

The point is, whatever the reason is, the PNP has decided to replace him, as it has done all the time with other potential candidates …the Jamaica Labour Party too.

Only recently, the PNP took out Lorane Ferguson and replaced him with Chris Brown in St Mary South Eastern, because the party felt that in Brown, it had a better candidate to win the seat. There has not been a public murmur from Ferguson.

Strangely, I did not hear so much fuss when the JLP announced the retirement of veteran legislator Karl Samuda, who has done 1,000 times more than Rowe, in terms of Jamaica’s overall development. Samuda even learned about his ‘retirement’ from elective politics by way of the media. Now, isn’t that sad? Should a political stalwart like Samuda have been treated that way?

What happened a few years ago when Ruddy Spencer surprisingly made way for Pearnel Charles Jr; or even as recent as a few weeks ago when Matthew Samuda replaced Marsha Smith in two JLP moves?

I remember shortly before the 2007 election when Paul Buchanan defeated four other candidates in Westmoreland Central, during a run-off to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Dr Karl Blythe as MP. Buchanan scored 405 votes, which was more than the combined number of the other four, who could only manage 401. But Buchanan was replaced by Roger Clarke, as Portia Simpson Miller went for her loyal disciples.

Clarke, who had retired and given up his safe St Elizabeth North Eastern seat, ran into trouble with the voters leading up to the election, and the party asked Buchanan, clearly the most popular off all those who had contested the runoff, to assist with Clarke’s campaign. Clarke won the seat and did so again in the general election of 2011.

Now, that’s how parties expect their people to function … continue to support it, even if you were not the preferred candidate. I flatly refuse to believe that the PNP could have offered Rowe $15 million to step aside and allow Steve McGregor to take charge of Kingston Central, because that would be throwing away funds that could have been useful to it in so many areas; and come to think of it, Rowe has nothing to offer.

Rowe believes that hunting time on talk shows will change anything. Political parties do not operate like that in Jamaica or elsewhere.

In time, he should learn … he must. Then, he would have developed into a real man, and get rid of the boyish tendencies that he has demonstrated thus far.

Watch it, Madame Auditor General

Tell me now, why is the Auditor General the latest one to ‘tek set’ on the prime minister?

Andrew Holness suggested last week that Ms Pamela Monroe Ellis, now in her 17th year as AG, just will not get off his back in openly questioning the Government’s management of the social housing programme.

Monroe Ellis’s department found that offerings from the the social housing programme for poor people were being duplicated by other projects, some of which fall under the direct leadership of the prime minister.

That was one of six highlighted in her recent audit report and the prime minister is having none of it.

Well, should anyone be surprised? Suddenly, everyone except the diehards of the JLP seems to be fighting against the PM and when he does not agree with a finding, he calls it nonsense. 

These are desperate times for the PM, and the AG uncovering too many discrepancies is only making things worse.