BRITISH PARLIAMENTARIAN Diane Abbott says the United States and Britain need to give greater support to Caribbean agriculture if they hope to win the war against illegal drugs.
Ms. Abbott, a London-born daughter of Jamaican immigrants, was speaking on Thursday night at the fourth annual Norman Manley Lecture held by the Norman Manley Law School Students' Association (NMLSSA) at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus. She was addressing the theme of the night, "Jamaica in the World in the 21st Century".
"A collapse of these commodities and a collapse of the employment opportunities they represent for unskilled and semi-skilled labour in the rural areas will precipitate increasing social upheaval in the region," Ms. Abbott said in reference to the banana and sugar industries.
She said Jamaica days of depending on these core industries are over but argued that it is necessary that the transition to the new economic framework be controlled.
"The danger of an increasingly precipitate collapse of rural agriculture is that you are going to see an acceleration of the drift of cities and you are going to see a transfer of labour and effort, not into alternative agriculture or computer inputting, but into drugs," she lamented.
Ms. Abbott suggested that with globalisation and the evolution of free trade, it is necessary that there be a level playing field. She expressed her discomfort with current trade policies, querying the legitimacy of countries like Jamaica being forced to surrender their tariffs and protection for their agriculture and manufacturers "only to have dumped on them the produce of the most heavily subsidised farmers in the world."
Ms. Abbott also made reference to the issue of the recruitment of teachers during her lecture, asking that Jamaicans try to appreciate the British practice of seeking teachers from foreign countries.
"We have problems in our schools which might surprise those of you who think everything in England is better than everything in Jamaica," she said, citing what she referred to as the dreadful shortage of teachers in inner-London schools. She explained that these schools are forced to rely heavily on agency teachers and teachers from overseas.
According to Ms. Abbott, in inner-London classrooms, where the majority of students are from ethnic minorities, teachers are being brought in from countries such as Australia and the Ukraine. The skills gained from teaching in a different environment, she said can be beneficial to Jamaican teachers and this nation as a whole.
"What we need is a structured method of organising so that the teachers can come back to Jamaica with increased skills and a contribution to be made," the British MP suggested.
Ms. Abbott, in 1987, became the first black woman to be elected to Parliament in Britain and represents Hackney North and Stoke Newington in London.
