THE EDITOR, Sir:
I LISTENED to the 'Breakfast Club' on August 11, and I was amazed that the panel took so long to accept Butch Stewart's point that Jamaica's tourism business was a vital export, major foreign exchange earner, and must be given priority in terms of expenditure to maintain optimum returns from the very competitive marketplace.
Exposure to Business 101 makes this very clear indeed and against the background of our crime rate and poor infrastructure, the destination could be unkindly likened to 'damaged goods'.
Neither could I understand Trevor Munroe's point that it is a choice to be made between money for tourism promotion and paying an inspector of police. The real choice is the billions lost to corruption by the Government and paying the police and the proverbial fowl coop for which there is no money to build. But we must also look at obvious bureaucratic waste. While ministries and government agencies are wastefully overstaffed, we refuse to re-allocate resources to critical areas.
The Orane Report, for example, identified savings of $2 billion from one ministry but only 10 per cent of this was targeted. There are dozens of such savings opportunities in the public sector, but 'managers' are obviously too lazy and inept to target these. This reflects nothing but very poor management of our very limited resources by the ministers and bureaucrats and they and the useless MoU are the problems and not the solutions we seek. The only actions that can maintain parity of wages are increased productivity and reduced inflation and these objectives are alien to the government agenda.
I am, etc.,
MARIA ANNE PATTERSON
Pembroke Pines
Florida, U.S.A.
