Tuesday, February 19, 2019

THE GLEANER, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2019 | www.jamaica-gleaner.com

A5

Gov’t to spend more than $350 million to build drop-in facilities The Government is expected to spend in excess of $350 million during the new fiscal year to construct three multipurpose drop-in centres to serve indigent residents in the Corporate Area, Portland and St Catherine, noted Minister of Local Government and Community Development Desmond McKenzie. The drop-in centres across the island will be furnished to create a more comfortable environment for persons who use the facilities.

WHAT’S YOUR VIEW?

OPINION #GLNROPED

The Gleaner welcomes your views on any issue. Preference will be given to letters of 300 words or less. They must bear the writer’s name, address and telephone contact. If using a pen name, you must state your full name. Your name and address will be withheld on request. EMAIL US: letters@gleanerjm.com or

WRITE US: Editor, The Gleaner Company (Media) Ltd, 7 North Street, PO Box 40, Kingston, or fax: (876)922-6223

THE EDITOR, Sir: WHO MUST we turn to for pro- tection? Can we, the people of Jamaica, depend and rely on the State to protect us in the face of decades of violent crime? It seems that the prime minis- ter of Jamaica, the leader of the Opposition, the minister of na- tional security and the commis- sioner of police do not know the necessary steps to take to save our lives from gunmen and criminals. Guns are not made in Jamaica, so I find it very strange seeing so many people dying by the gun, by the hands of so many gunmen, when our authorities have the powers to curtail the onslaught. The only thing that man can- not do is create a living being. I firmly believe that the powers that be have the power and the necessary equipment to conquer the gun trade and the gunrun- ners in Jamaica. All they need to do is to find the guns, and they need to find them quickly, too. Technology, surveillance cam- eras, trained dogs, telephone calls, etc., are some of the tools that we can use to cap- ture the monsters of crime – headed by our national security. Why do so many people continue to die by the gun in Jamaica when we have our national security to protect us from the gun pests? DONALD J. MCKOY donaldmckoy876@gmail.com The police need to find the guns quickly Since the Greater Mandeville Water Supply was developed decades ago, there have been no improvements to the system. It has got rather worse and with hun- dreds of houses unconnected due to the lack of water, for example, in the Moorlands area, what will the NWC tell the Mandeville people. If‘water is life’what do you think the ‘lack of water’ is? DANIEL LEWIS danlew2020@gmail.com THE EDITOR, Sir: IN RESPONSE to the column in The SundayGleaner ,‘NWC com- mitted tomeeting Jamaica’s water needs’, written by Mark Barnett, president of the National Water Commission (NWC), I must com- mend the NWC for finally putting together a number of projects that will increase water availabil- ity for the country. The outline of expenditure speaks ‘volumes’. I must, however, take issues with the low allocations for rural areas , and in particular, Mandeville. From the table of expendi- ture presented, one tenth of the resources goes to the rural areas ($1 billion, as oppose to $10 billion for Kingston). I am living in Mandeville on DeCarteret Road, close to the town centre, where the water situation is atrocious. The norm is to have a two-hour trickle once per week, down from the three times per week five years ago. I live by rain- fall and trucked water in the lower area. Can you imagine what it is like for people on the hills? NWC committed, but not to Mandeville

[ LETTER OF THE DAY ]

Deal with the real problems, Minister Montague

LETTERS THE EDITOR, Sir: R ECENTLY, TRANSPORT Minister Robert Montague announced a raft of meas- ures he intends to implement as early as April 1, 2019. These include, among other things: 1. Instalment of tracking systems on all public passenger vehicles (PPVs). 2. The formalisation of all‘robot taxis’, or illegal operators. 3. Uniforms for all PPV operators. 4. Stiffer fines and penalties for illegal operators, etc. While I applaud the minister’s vision to have a comfortable and professional transportation sector, the sad reality is that there are a number of underlying issues that will prevent this from happening unless addressed. The minister can’t be living in a vacuum with regard to these issues, as they are all around him, staring all of us in the face every day. The first issue is with the Transport Authority (TA). It is tardy, to say the least, with the processing and issuing of road licences for the various transport operators. The TA just doesn’t have the capacity to deal with the load of applications. It functions like a monopoly handicapped by bureaucratic bungling. Just ask several applicants how long it takes them to get their licence after submitting all their documents; it’s anywhere from three to four months and beyond. In the meantime, some of them still work illegally as the loans still have to be paid, food has to be bought, and bills have to be paid. Some of these operators have their vehicles seized and impounded by the police, compounding the problems. THE EDITOR, Sir: ON OCTOBER 10, 2017, the Data Protection Bill,“an act to protect the privacy of certain data and for connected matters”, was ta- bled in Parliament. During its introduction, the importance of expediting the process was reiterated. Like the rest of the public, Jamaica AIDS Support for Life (JASL) has an interest in this bill and the timeliness of its expedition. The bill places an obligation on public and private entities to implement particular systems to safeguard their collection, storage and processing of data and spe- cifically covers certain classes of “sensitive personal data” (that is, genetic or biometric data, and data regarding racial or ethnic origin, sex life, physical or mental health or condition, political opinions, philosophical and religious beliefs, trade union membership, or the commission or alleged commission

The second issue is poor road conditions. I have not heard the minister mention anything about the poor condition of the roads. I pray for the day to come when all drivers in Jamaica can drive on pothole-free roads that are well lit and marked with the relevant signs and stop lights where they ought to be. Sadly, the reality is the complete opposite. Pothole-riddled roads with no light and markings are the norm when driving across Jamaica, con- tributing to bad driving, accidents, and stress to the PPV drivers, in particular, because they have to continually work under these con- ditions. All of these contribute to high maintenance costs and, cou- pled with the cost of keeping the vehicle, will drive an owner mad if he or she is not business-savvy. The minister seems to feel that PPV operators are awash with cash because now, they will have to install tracking devices on their vehicles come April. Is this minis- ter for real? In addition to the cost of insurance, fuel, a road licence and membership, operators will now have to findmoney to pay for tracking monthly. And yet, there is no indication as to when fares will be increased to offset some of these costs. No wonder the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) is bleed- ing billions with no end in sight, because the cost to run the JUTC outweighs the revenues. Some PPV operators have to increase their fares, be it illegally, as a means to remain viable. I hope the minister will address some of these issues in the near future before trying to put a Band-Aid over a boil. P. HARRISON phbravo2@gmail.com of any offences). After hearing submissions from the public in early 2018, including JASL, which has asked for improve- ments in the Bill to protect the most vulnerable in society, the public has heard nothing further on the bill. JASL’s recent hosting of a mul- ti-stakeholder consultation with civil-society and health-sector rep- resentatives on the Bill has raised some serious concerns about the lack of public education and nec- essary revisions to the bill, as well as a timetable for its passage. Given that the health sector is to be severely impacted by this Bill, we deem it important and in the best interest of the public that the Government reopen the dia- logue on the Data Protection Bill as a matter of urgency. PATRICK LALOR Policy and Advocacy Officer Jamaica AIDS Support for Life rmiller@jasforlife.org

Members of the Jamaica National Service Corps Intake 1801 helping to clean up the Boys Town Infant and Primary School in Kingston on Saturday, as part of a beautification project. KENYON HEMANS/PHOTOGRAPHER

The Gleaner [ EDITORIAL ]

The uphill climb for Labour’s rebels

Y ESTERDAY’S DEFECTION from Labour of seven members of the British Parliament will, as was the case nearly four decades ago, likely again reveal how difficult it is to up- end the entrenched two-party arrangement of Westminster-style politics, with its first-past-the- post voting system. It is a fact that we know only too well in Jamaica. In this case, the rebels’ task will probably prove even more difficult unless they somehow convince big hefts of both Labour and Tory voters that they are driven by, and stand for, more than antipathy to, Labour’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn. From this distance, we question their strategic capacity to do so. Their timing, at best, seems to be badly wanting, if not atrocious. The seven who decamped Labour are Ann Coffey, Angela Smith, Luciana Berger, Chris Leslie, David Shuker, Mike Gapes and Chuka Umunna, whose action has clear echoes from 1981, when there was another split in the party. Back then, four members – David Owens, Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bills Rodgers – left to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which, a decade later, merged with the old Liberal Party to create the Liberal Democratic Party (Lib Dems). The seven haven’t, at least not yet, created a party, calling themselves, instead, the Independent Group. Their intention, however, as was the case 38 years ago this past January, is clear. Making the claim that Labour had become anti-Semitic and that under Mr Corbyn, it was pursuing ideology rather than eco- nomics, they urged both Tory and Labour members of parliament (MPs )to join them. On the latter point, there are similarities with the fallout of ‘81. The quartet of that era argued that Labour under Michael Foot, as is much of the com- plaint against Mr Corbyn, was being dragged too far to the left, including with proposals for unilateral nuclear disbarment and renationalisations that made it unelectable. SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES There are significant differences in the circum- stances of the two periods, however. For instance, unlike the rebels of‘81, none of this group, except for Mr Umunna, with his limited service on the opposition front benches, has experience in government and commands a substantial national profile. None is, as they were even then, a towering political figure of a Dr Owen, Mr Jenkins or Ms Williams.

Further, there will be plenty people ready tomount an argument in favour of Labour’s electability. Mr Corbynmay have got on the leader ballot by a whisker in 2015, but he won the contest by a landslide and did even better merely a year later, even after a massive vote of no-confidence in leadership by MPs. More critically, in the 2017 general election, when Mr Corbyn’s critics expected the party to be mauled, there was a 9.6 per cent voter swing to the party, and it received 5.5 million more votes than in the election two years earlier under Ed Miliband’s leadership. DIVERSE FRONT BENCH While Ms Berger, a reported victim of abuse, and others may have credible claims of Mr Corbyn’s slow- ness in tackling anti-Semitism, the racial and gender diversity on Labour’s front benches under his lead- ership is apparent. Critics of the group will probably recall that Ms Coffey was a seconder of the motion by MPs in Mr Corbyn’s leadership; that before he backed away, Mr Umunna was touted as a front-runner to challenge the leader; and that Ms Berger and Messrs Umunna and Gapes were beingmentioned as possible targets for deselection by Mr Corbyn’s supporters in their constituency parties. The point is that Labour MPs have long been uneasy with Mr Corbyn, a lifelong left-winger, and this group, as much as any and more than most. It may yet be that British politics deserves, and is about to get, a shake-up. But the rebels will do well to remember history and determine the investment for this to happen. In the 1983 general election, the SDP got 25 per cent of the votes but 23 seats in the more-than- 600-member commons. Its successor, the Lib Dems, has oscillated in support since, but is yet to get the big breakthrough. The point is that Labour MPs have long been uneasy with Mr Corbyn, a lifelong left-winger, and this group as much as any and more than most.

Urgent dialogue needed on Data Protection Bill

The opinions on this page, except for The Editorial, do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Gleaner.