Stupidly, she stole about $5 million from her employers. Within a few months, her crime was discovered. In sheer panic, she makes partial restitution. However, she had already spent $750,000 on a car. An additional $200,000 had been put in an...
Smoking ganja in public or within five metres of a public place is prohibited under the Dangerous Drugs (Amendment Act) 2015. So when the pungent smell of ganja wafted around the precincts of the Supreme Court building on Thursday afternoon, Chief...
Good ideas emanate from an urge to make the world a better place. Despondent from not being able to celebrate India’s Republic Day in Jamaica in January 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, we took inspiration from the man who is...
The man asked his wife, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” Immediately, she shook her head, sighed and replied, “The rooster did. The rooster always comes first.” Another answer is that the egg came first because dinosaurs laid eggs long...
There was no chest thumping by the police chief, Major General Antony Anderson, at his briefing this week on the current state of crime in Jamaica, just a measured recitation of the data. Any crowing was behind the scenes by politicians. Yet,...
“You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting” (Daniel 5:27). We waited long and hard for the new Road Traffic Act passed by Parliament in 2018 to be implemented. Indiscipline on our roads is widespread, and fatal accidents break...
Some years ago, serving as director of research, information and communication at the Consumer Affairs Commission, I used the platform of the Consumer Education Programme to place issues of cybercrime, identity theft and the invisible presence of...
As revelations continue to dribble from the files of the Financial Services Commission (FSC) about the scandal at the brokers Stocks and Securities Limited (SSL), three things are increasingly apparent. First, unlike what may have been initially...
Jamaica is experiencing a crisis of leadership. Our problems in crime and violence, crudity and indiscipline, education and socialisation are the logical consequences of poor, weak leadership at the political and other levels. Our leaders lack the...
Climate change is the ultimate magnifier, which means it has the effect of worsening the societal issues challenging our development. One example of its magnifying capabilities is its impact on poverty. Climate change is expected to drive up to 130...
Dr Christopher Tufton recently disclosed that over the past half-decade the compassionate healthcare grants by the National Health Fund (NHF) increased fivefold, to $500 million. Relative to the Government’s overall spending on the provision of...
Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) will be holding their 44th regular conference in The Bahamas, February 15 to 17. This conference will be chaired by the Hon Philip Davis, prime minister of The Bahamas, who is the current...
Belgium’s brutal King Leopold 11 committed one of the most heinous acts of genocide in the dawn of the 20th century with the killing of over 10 million Africans in the Congo. Many more Africans were mutilated by having their hands chopped off. And...
Viewers of BBC News may be familiar with Laura Trevelyan, one of its correspondents in Washington. She is a scion of an English aristocratic family who owned 1,004 slaves on six sugar plantations in Grenada, for whom they were compensated at the...
My muted reaction to the Stocks and Securities Limited (SSL) drama has been deliberate. I’ve many reasons for not commenting on specifics. I could pretend the main reason is I don’t want to enter the over-crowded media kitchen and join the gaggle...
Last November made it 25 years since I completed postgraduate training in obstetrics and gynaecology, and my journey in that field has been fantastic. I have learnt from medical school, my postgraduate training, and medical conferences, but much...
Help me with some big issues we are afraid of confronting. Last week, the finance minister announced what he considers to be a decisive blow against rollover employment contracts in the public service. Sounds good. So will all contract workers be...
The announcement that China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) and The University of the West Indies (UWI) will jointly develop a civil engineering laboratory to service UWI Mona Western Jamaica Campus in Montego Bay reflects that kind of practical...
I checked out The Gleaner piece, “Jamaica still ranked low on Corruption Perception Index”, published Tuesday, January 31, 2023. It was on Jamaica’s position in Transparency International’s 2022 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) country rankings....
I can hardly believe that so many years have elapsed since my carefree days in high school with my friends planning our futures. Well, some had much clearer plans than I did. I have to admit I was never the one with the definitive plans about what...
Last week’s graduation, and deployment in St James, of 20 people with skills to provide initial psychological support in communities facing trauma must be urgently scaled up and rolled out nationally as part of the Government’s anti-crime effort...
The Christmas Rebellion, Baptist war or Sam Sharpe’s Rebellion is one of the least appreciated contributions by Jamaica to world. The history taught to us was that the abolitionists fought and won the war against slavery through flowery speeches...
Delusional Jamaicans do not like to acknowledge the fact that racial discrimination is a major problem in this country. They readily admit that class prejudice is an issue. If I had substituted ‘poor’ for ‘some’ in my headline, it wouldn’t have...
Hindsight is 20-20 and as the Road Safety Council and others go back to the sketchpad regarding the recent passage of the Road Traffic Act, my sympathies are with the members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) as they try to enforce some of...
Driver education in schools seems like an excellent way to tackle the ongoing carnage on the nation’s roads. If there is national concern about public safety, as there ought to be, then safe and smart driving is desperately needed in Jamaica at...
