The Editor, Sir:

The recent success of the 10th Anniversary Air Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival has brought into sharp focus the invaluable contribution Montego Bay continues to make to the national economy and everything must be done to protect the 'tourism capital' of this nation.

There are however, some severe problems that could seriously damage the industry if they are not immediately addressed and the daily traffic congestion, along with the horrible eyesore of the filthy gullies filled with garbage of every kind, threatens to suffocate the vibrancy and potential of a city that is at the heart of Jamaica's future.

It is truly incredible that, some five months after it was announced that malaria was flying around with the mosquitoes, we still have volumes of stagnant dirty water all around the city, especially the North Gully, Railway Lane and Barnett Street. It is important to remind the Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of Health that the anopholes mosquitoes will not confine their activities to the poor impoverished sections of the city and everything must be done and quickly to make the entire city and its environs clean and safe, at the earliest.

Tourism is our bread and butter and a clean city, is a proud city, is a prosperous city. I am appealing to the Hon. Portia Lucretia Simpson Miller to use the enormity of all the power of the office she wields as Prime Minister of Jamaica to attend to these problems with alacrity, before the only airplanes that land at Sangster International Airport are those that are flying tourists away from malaria.

Daily frustration

The traffic congestion is something that, I understand, the Prime Minister has personally and recently experienced, when she was forced to leave the safety of her motor vehicle and walk to her hotel, however, this is a daily frustration for all the residents of Montego Bay. The real danger is that emergency vehicles are being hindered and we need to establish emergency yellow marked lanes for priority vehicles, to prevent legal action against incompetent governance.

I am, etc.,

MICHAEL C. MOYSTON

Jahspeed @hotmail.com

32 Sunset Blvd.

Montego Bay