EDITORIAL - Now that the JLP partly owns JEEP

Frankly, we can't understand all the fuss by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). This hyperventilation over ownership of the jobs project that the Government is about to launch seems like so much wasted energy. It would be better, and far less stressful, if the Opposition had merely acknowledged, and celebrated, the Government's embrace of continuity - which, essentially, is what is being claimed.

From that perspective, this newspaper, assuming that the JLP's observation is true, congratulates the governing People's National Party (PNP). We, however, make no comment about the underlying merit of the initiative that is in dispute.

The quarrel, of course, is over the Jamaica Emergency Employment Programme (JEEP), which was a centrepiece of the PNP's campaign for last month's general election, which it won.

JEEP, in part, is predicated on directing up to 25 per cent of the remaining money for a Chinese-financed road-repair scheme, as well as other resources, to labour-intensive infrastructure rehabilitation and environment-enhancement projects. Additionally, the PNP promised to give incentives to firms that created net new jobs, but has not yet said how this will work.

Ready to drive

Last weekend, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, in office for three weeks, announced that her Government is ready to roll out JEEP, starting with a total of 700 jobs in seven parishes. Financed with money from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), workers would maintain verges and drains along the North Coast Highway.

In Government, the JLP had complained that JEEP would not create real productive jobs. Rather, it would encompass the kind of lazy wastefulness that is now ascribed to the 'crash programme' of the PNP administration of the 1970s, when that party vigorously embraced democratic socialism.

What the JLP now claims is that the jobs project being launched is its own, only rebranded as JEEP. According to JLP spokespersons Shahine Robinson and Karl Samuda, their administration had, in fact, negotiated funding for the North Coast Highway initiative from the IDB, but lost the government before it could be implemented.

Sensible continuation

That sometimes happens in government; the new guy sometimes implements and gets credit for the previous guy's project. In our process, too, it is not uncommon for the new guy to chuck out the old guy's initiatives, merely for the fact they were the old guy's.

In this case, the PNP apparently feels that there is merit in a programme left by the JLP and is moving ahead with its implementation - albeit under the JEEP acronym. That is in keeping with Mrs Simpson Miller's directive for continuation, where it makes sense.

We agree that they might have acknowledged, if Messrs Robinson and Samuda are correct, the JLP's paternity of this aspect of JEEP. That they didn't is no cause for a coronary.

Our advice to the JLP, especially now that it claims part ownership of JEEP, is to ensure that it is worth the ride. Taxpayers must get value for money. The jobs must be real and productive, with quantifiable returns.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.