Commentary

Productivity is at the heart of a prosperous nation. Unfortunately, Jamaica lags behind in this area due to its highly unskilled population. The 2018 Survey of Living Conditions, released this year, showed that 65 per cent of Jamaicans who are...

DESPITE THE claims of a covert effort to unseat him, the Council of The University of the West Indies (UWI) last week reappointed Professor Sir Hilary Beckles to a second six-year term as vice-chancellor of the regional university. It probably did...

With the world facing an epidemic of overweight/obesity and non-communicable diseases (NCDs), nutritional information and other health-related information and their places on food labels are of growing importance. Providing these in a concise yet...

Since mid-April, the matter of the diaspora, remittances and their perception of its contribution to government finances have been in the news in Jamaica. The controversy has led me to reflect on what really are remittances. There is no doubt that...

Lambert Brown got it profoundly wrong. For it was not only where he made his remarks that was inappropriate – and egregiously so – but the remarks themselves. Which he made worse by doubling down on them. Just as disconcerting is the failure of Mr...

I wonder what the United Nations was thinking when it decided to identify gender equality as an important goal for sustainable development. I wonder what would have possessed scholars, economists, development theorists and practitioners, who have...

I feel as if I was somehow transported into an alternate universe. A universe where morality is only an inconvenience and sometimes used when needed for specific purposes. In this universe, anything goes – as long as one can get away with it. Right...

Get licensed or face prosecution! Under the Microcredit Act 2021 (MCA), operating a microfinance business without a licence is illegal. The recent passage of the MCA in Parliament represents a significant milestone in the microfinance industry,...

I was never a fan of Barack Obama. The euphoria with him being the first black president was the manifestation of the hope that his reign would usher in a new era for Afro Americans who had suffered so long under slavery, Jim Crow laws, and racist...

On the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) return to office in 2016, Prime Minister Andrew Holness seemed ready to ditch his party’s historic reticence towards Caribbean integration, or at least to position Jamaica to extract as much as possible from the...

Fresh from electoral victories in 2020, first-time parliamentarians were exposed to a five-week virtual seminar in the rudiments of parliamentary procedures aimed at preparing them to effectively carry out their duties. Post-election seminars...

When I was growing up and people of East Indian, Grenadian, Vincentian or even Jamaican descent walked into a medical facility and said they were looking for a “jab”, I knew that the person was seeking paid employment. Now, that has changed...