By Byron McDaniel, Gleaner WriterWALDERSTON, Manchester:
PETER MATHERS, the British High Commissioner to Jamaica, says that although predictions of civil unrest here have not materialised in 2003, Jamaica's economy and the crime problem remain causes for concern.
He was addressing the annual fund-raising dinner of the Returned Residents' Association of Mandeville at the Golf View Hotel there on Saturday.
"I have to produce an annual review for the foreign office in London... This means I must give some thoughts to what has happened in Jamaica during the year," he told the more than 300 guests, most of whom were returned residents.
POOR GETTING POORER
He said there was a feeling that while the minority continued to do well and grow wealthier, many middle income people were worse off than they were a year ago.
"The poorest have remained very poor, even if by some measures overall poverty has been reduced," he said.
He was conscious, Mr. Mathers said, that he and his British colleagues at the High Commission were outsiders here but, 'the United Kingdom and Jamaica have such close links and many of our aspirations and goals are shared ones, that I feel that we can observe and comment on what is going on in much the same way as if we were Jamaicans ourselves.'
He expressed satisfaction with the efforts of the security forces in confronting violent criminals and the authorities' willingness to conduct enquiries into killings at Braeton and Kraal. He described the homicide rate as horrifyingly high, but said that compared to the previous year it was lower, according to the statistics.
PREREQUISITE FOR INVESTMENT
A prerequisite for investment was peace and security, Mr. Mathers said, adding that this would move the economy forward, provide new jobs, give the poorest hope and some alternatives to drifting into crime, and to restore faith 'in this beautiful country''.
"I know that returning residents, and indeed people of Jamaican origin over 600,000 whom are still living abroad feel very distressed by what has gone wrong in Jamaica and may feel powerless to seek remedies. It is in all our interests to resist the temptations to succumb to such pessimism."
He said that what had gone wrong in Jamaica was not just a Jamaican problem. "We are all, to a greater or lesser extent, struggling with problems of crime which has an increasingly international dimension. We are facing threats from international terrorism, diseases such as SARS, and the terrible spread of HIV/AIDS," Mr. Mathers said.
Clearly there is scope for the association to contribute to the process of engaging more foreign-based Jamaicans in building the new Jamaica 'we are all hoping for', Mr. Mathers said.
