EDITORIAL - The worth of 24-hour shopping

Gassan Azan is right. The 24-hour opening of the Kingston and Montego Bay branches of his MegaMart stores over the Christmas shopping period is adding flexibility to the conduct of commerce in Jamaica.

Busy people will be able to schedule their shopping excursions to avoid the crush. While he did not say so, we suspect this move is also an experiment, the success, or otherwise, of which will determine whether Mr Azan permanently extends the opening hours of his stores.

Of course, Mr Azan, while the first grocer, is not the first retail business with a 24-hour operation. At midyear, York Pharmacy, in Half-Way Tree, after its acquisition by Serron Pharmaceuticals, turned itself into a round-the-clock operation. And, for many years, several petrol stations and fast-food franchises have opened throughout the night.

Nonetheless, commercial activity in Jamaica is largely a morning-to-early evening exercise, placing artificial limits on economic activity.

There are several reasons, including complex ones, for this state of affairs. But this newspaper senses that the time is ripe, in the face of recent International Monetary Fund-induced efforts for economic reform, to accelerate other elements for the liberalisation of commerce.

This will include policymakers extricating themselves from the hostage-taking of Christian fundamentalists and getting on with the introduction of the flexible workweek, over which legislators and others have debated for nearly two decades. A date must be set for the amending of several bits of legislation to facilitate this.

We believe that making every day a regular workday, and allowing employers and employees to negotiate their work hours, will unleash creativity and productivity in workers.

But to extract the utmost value from this initiative, the Government has another major problem to confront - security. With more than 1,000 homicides a year, at a rate of more than 40 per 100,000 population, Jamaica has one of the world's highest murder rates. Crime breeds fear, affecting people's movement after dark.

We, therefore, expect the kind of policies from the national security minister, Peter Bunting, and strategies and tactics from police chief Owen Ellington - for the time they remain in office - that support the initiatives of people like Gassan Azan.

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.