Nicholson: Visitors won't forgive dirty Ja with female PM in charge

Marcella Scarlett, Business Reporter

Tourism Minister Wykeham McNeill last week touted the hospitality sector as both a strong employer and magnet for travellers, but his foreign trade colleague is insisting that Jamaica first needs to rid itself of its unclean image before going after more business.

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Senator A.J. Nicholson said visitors are unlikely to view a dirty country favourably, even more so now with a female prime minister in charge. And a clean Jamaica, he suggested, could give Jamaica comparative advantage over rival Caribbean destinations.

"We might be able to get away with a dirty Jamaica being presided over by a man. You won't get away with a woman presiding over a dirty country," he said at an investment forum in Kingston.

Portia Simpson Miller became prime minister after her party won the December 29 polls, but this is her second time in the job. She previously ran the country from 2006-2007.

Environmentalists, meantime, were more concerned about sustainable development, saying that, as Negril now proves, damage repair is expensive and environmental harm is potentially irreversible.

Nicholson last week used the seventh annual JSE Investment and Capital Markets Conference in Kingston to launch a clean-up project for Jamaica.

The senator said Jamaica would be easier to sell as a tourism destination by using cleanliness to distinguish itself from the rest of the Caribbean. He said better alliances could be formed if Jamaica was cleaned up, both physically and mentally.

"You can't go to the UK, for example, to ask persons to come here. They come on a clean plane, served by persons in clean uniforms, and when they meet you, you were clean, but when they step off the plane and drive around Jamaica, it not so clean," said Nicholson.

"I do not believe it is right to ask people to invest in your country if it dirty. It is my view that a clean Jamaica will be a rich Jamaica."

Tourism reportedly contributed more than J$2 billion to tax revenue and 6.1 per cent to GDP in 2010. In that year, there were some 2.8 million stopover and cruise visitors combined.

The sector is said to account for more than 10 per cent of total national employment. More than 80,000 persons were employed in the tourism industry directly and 180,000 indirectly, according to a World Bank report issued June 2011.

Still, environmentalists who acknowledge the industry as an economic powerhouse for Jamaica warn that failure to police developments could end up killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

"In the 1950s, Negril's coastline was dotted with wide, clean beaches. Now, with all the development on the beach and beach erosion, this is no more," said Diana McCaulay, chief executive officer of Jamaica Environment Trust.

"Developers are the ones who are causing tourism to be enemies to the environment. We are losing, rather, we have lost, the very thing that took us to Negril in the first place," McCaulay said.

To reduce the level of pollution in Negril, the Jamaican Government is undertaking a US$278 million project backed by the European Development Fund to upgrade the wastewater system in Negril.

The need for such spending could have been avoided "if the proper planning and implementation was done," the environmentalist said.

McNeill agreed that a programme is needed to reduce environmental damage, but said it would be "costly".

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