We share the concern of Mark Kerr-Jarrett, the Montego Bay businessman and chairman of the St. James Parish Development Committee, that the growth of housing and other social infrastructure in the city is not keeping pace with hotel development in the region.

This tourism construction boom should add 12,000 new hotel rooms - some of which are already open - by 2010 and create a projected 15,000 new jobs. All that, on the face of it, is impressive. Such are the drivers of economic growth.

But Mr. Kerr-Jarrett's fear, grounded in history and some thought, is that this expansion, in the absence of concomitant social infrastructure, will be the seed of the industry's destruction. As he pointed out last week, several of the informal settlements in and around Montego Bay, the major hub for Jamaica's tourism, grew with the industry's expansion in the 1960s and 1980s. People came to the city to find jobs in hotels and other tourism-related enterprises, but with few places to live, they squatted where they could.

It is these informal settlements that account for a substantial portion of the crime which now plagues Montego Bay and the parish of St. James, and which holds the potential to undermine the tourism sector. Clearly, therefore, the provision of affordable housing and other social amenities must be in the multi-isciplinary package necessary to attack criminal violence and other antisocial behaviour in the country.

Indeed, this is a policy issue clearly understood by several government agencies, including the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), which has highlighted the fact that nearly 40,000 housing solutions will be required in Jamaica by the end of this decade and that many of these will be necessary in the tourism belt.

Where we may have a slight difference with Mr. Kerr-Jarrett, and others who have proffered this position, is the seeming emphasis that providing these housing solutions is precisely the job of the Government. This, on the face of it, harks back to a period of big government while at the same time we, in line with the global trends, insist on a slimmed-down, streamlined, non-interventionist state.

This, of course, is not to say that the state has no role in the provision of housing and shelter solutions, but rather to suggest that in a market-oriented economy this need for housing should provide opportunities for an enterprising private sector. Indeed, these opportunities should have been apparent from the time the hotel expansion programme was first announced at the start of the decade.

Indeed, Mr. Kerr-Jarrett's own company, as well as others, has either completed, has projects under construction or has real estate development on the drawing board. But clearly these are not sufficient to clear the backlog or to meet future demands. Apparently, too, these projects are not always in the price range of those who will flock to the tourism belt in search of jobs.

It seems to us, therefore, that there is need for new and creative thinking to bring affordable housing solutions to the market for private ownership and rental. This should not be beyond the capacity of private sector firms, working with the government to provide the basic infrastructure, and tapping into the billions of dollars in the coffers of the National Housing Trust.