Commentary

Last Thursday, I had an upful conversation with Mr Lemar Fraser, a gardener in my neighbourhood. We were talking about the dread conditions of life in Jamaica and our hope for change in the new year. Lemar passed judgement on the workers of...

“HOW MUCH easier it is to be critical than to be correct”. Canute Thompson’s recent assessment of the Jamaica Labour (JLP) administration’s achievements in health breathes life into this adage, while betraying a seeming lack of understanding of the...

In part I of this two-part series, Denise E. Antonio, UNDP resident representative, examined the cost of insecurity to Jamaica and how it denies Jamaica her true potential. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been pleased over the...

Efforts by the Companies Office of Jamaica (COJ) to speed up business registration is adding further momentum to the idea that technology can transform the public sector by making it more efficient and user-friendly. We were drawn to a recent news...

I’ve sat and read the article written by the Police Federation’s chairman Patrae Rowe titled ‘The true state of The Jamaica Constabulary Force’ published in The Gleaner on Tuesday, December 31, 2019, and it gave me a sense of real-time confirmation...

As we enter the last year of the second decade of the 21st century, at the same time we enter the first year of the decade of the 2020s. Some people expect dramatic changes at the beginning of a new year, or a new decade, or a new century, or a new...

In 1781, some 132 African slaves were thrown overboard to lighten the slave ship, Zong, while en route from West Africa to Black River. The murdered slaves subsequently formed the basis of an insurance claim for loss of property and cargo. This...

But for Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ apparently tortured soul on the matter, the recent failed attempt by the Jamaican Language Unit (JLU) to rally public support in an online petition to stir the Government into formal recognition to the island’...

The last month of 2019 brought an amazing action that might be its dying wish for the new year, 2020, about to be born. It was the invasion by civil society of territory dominated by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (...

More than six years ago, in 2013, at the 75th anniversary of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU), this newspaper noted that the observance seemed to have been passing “largely like a damp squib”. Kavan Gayle, the BITU president, we noted,...

These awards are (mostly) meant to be humourous. The Dunce was a happy-go-lucky character who took nothing seriously. So if you get an urge to rattle off irate emails, don’t. They’ll go directly to ‘junk’. Dunce Award: This year’s winner by...

I think I can understand Horace Chang’s unease about the efficacy of the social intervention dispensed by the Peace Management Initiative (PMI), the Citizens Security and Justice Programme (CSJP) and a host of other projects attempting to alleviate...