THE THREAT to tourism in Montego Bay lies less with outbursts of criminal violence than with the squalor that engulfs the Second City.
That we think is the telling point made by the Suffragan Bishop the Rt. Rev. Howard Gregory in his article published elsewhere on this page today. His walk in the wake of the Flankers episode took him through Sam Sharpe Square where the imposing new Civic Centre and ghosts of Jamaican history grace a space devoid of any tourist. They would have had to brave flows of sewage at some point leading to the square.
We raise this aspect of the vital tourist traffic in light of incipient rejection of the knee-jerk concern about what the violence does to the economic prospects so dependent on visitors coming here.
Critics have claimed that some tourist interests are more concerned that the image of the resort may suffer irreparable damage than they are about the loss of life and consequential human suffering at Flankers.
It is not accidental that such urban upheaval happens more often than not in the depressed inner-city communities. The sub-standard housing and rustic shacks, sometimes alongside multi-storey structures, seem ready-made for the criminality which attracts heavy-handed policing.
Flankers, for example, has a history of being a volatile community and the residents are no strangers to conflict and controversy. Its place in Jamaican history this time is assured particularly by the unprecedented police apology for the tragic shooting deaths of two elderly citizens.
The episode has also challenged the hitherto automatic assumption that the effect on tourism is the major casualty.
Even if crime is eliminated the major task of erasing the squalor which stains the resort capital must be tackled with urgency. Making people proud of their surroundings and their city should be the launching pad to tourism prosperity.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
