Robert Buddan Labour Day of May 23 was held under the theme, 'Honouring our ancestors - celebrating our communities'. On May 18, Jamaica celebrated Children's Day. May, of course, is Child's Month. At one and the same time our communities are asked to recognise generations past and present.
The popular 1960s phrase, 'generation gap', emphasised the differences between them.
This month's activities will emphasise what they have in their mutual interest. The family and its lineage represent this. The community is the space in which families build prosperity.
We are honouring our ancestors as well. This year Jamaica and the ex-slave populations of the world are commemorating the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. This week, the Indian community is also celebrating Indian Arrival Day. Happily, on May 4, Jamaica celebrated its first Taino Day, recognising our first inhabitants (also called Arawaks). And, of course, each Labour Day, we remember the workers of 1938 whose rebellion against a failed plantation system led to the emergence of modern trade unions, political parties, the right to vote, and the emergence of our democracy.
It is our ethnicities, labouring classes, and social institutions that make up the nation. Labour Day, Indian Arrival Day, Taino Day, Children's Day, Child's Month, our ancestors, families and communities represent forces in the continuing process of nation building.
The recent Bill Johnson/Gleaner Polls give us an indication of where we need to concentrate our energies in nation building. Jobs, crime, water, and roads are the areas that communities feel most concerned about. What is being done?
Community renewal
Public and private sector organisations have established a Steering Committee to judge the best Jamaican community on the view that communities represent the best environments for social transformation. The best of 180 participating communities will be announced on Emancipation Day, August 1.
What is encouraging is that communities want to renew themselves. The number of participating communities exceeded what the organisers had expected in this inaugural experimental year. This indicates the presence of a community spirit upon which people can renew and build their neighbourhoods.
Communities will be judged on the projects they have for the environment, disaster preparedness, health, education, waste management, heritage and culture, and improving depressed areas.
Prizes will also be awarded for the most beautiful community, the best-kept educational institution, the most improved agricultural practices, the best cultural heritage programme, and the best community spirit and self-reliance.
From the first free villages after Emancipation to the modern community, community building has always depended on the civic spirit of community members, state support, social activists, and philanthropy to grow. This is why acts of corporate responsibility by Victoria Mutual, Petroleum Corporation, Petrojam, the Tourism Product Development Company, Marathon Insurance, and the Insurance Company of the West Indies, are so important to this initiative.
Others must join them when many more communities come on board next year.
Small Business and Communities
Corporate responsibility in and towards communities is important, since this is where corporations draw their human resources, raw materials, clients, and goodwill. But people in communities must also be supported to build their own businesses. Spirit and philanthropy alone will not sustain community renewal and nation building.
This is why it is important that Government has increased the funds to be made available to micro and small businesses from $2.2 billion last year to $3.8 billion this year. In addition, and this is very important, the Jamaica Business Development Centre (JBDC) is establishing business incubators and business information centres around the country to help small businesses through the most difficult start-up process, especially for those with little experience in managing a business professionally. Already, there are about seven such centres, either established or in the process of establishment in different parishes, and people are responding well to them.
This thrust builds on two facts. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor of 2006 said that Jamaicans were the most entrepreneurial people in the world, that is, more Jamaicans per population expressed an interest or had attempted to start their own business, compared to other countries.
However, the report noted that the competencies to make a business succeed were another matter. The other fact is that micro and small businesses contribute some 40 per cent to the Jamaican economy. Since Emancipation, small people have made a sizeable contribution to the economy, mostly in the informal sector. The aim now is to formalise this sector through greater technical, legal, institutional, and financial support.
Big Business and Communities
Business creates business for other businesses. Big corporations can create business for smaller ones. National corporations can create linkages with community-based ones. This is precisely the concept behind the EU/GOJ Private Sector Development Programme. The idea is to target four to 10 sectors, such as the creative sector, agri-business, and tourism and develop business clusters that partner big business with micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.
The Jamaica Employers' Federation is working with the JBDC to establish a business hub in Kingston to promote small and micro businesses. Christopher Anand, managing partner in Tavistock Group of investors in the huge Harmony Cove project, says that the combination of the vibrancy, welcoming and optimistic nature of Jamaicans and the big investments by the GOJ in highways, ports, water, and the multi-purpose stadium in Trelawny, were attracting investors, and all of this would create unbelievable opportunities for all kinds of business.
SuperClubs has joined in an initiative called Recycling Inspiration with the Ministry of Tourism, Entertainment and Culture, Air Jamaica and HEART/NTA to empower young people, and promises to employ at least 300 persons.
What these have in common is business, income, jobs, and enterprise that are community-based and will be particularly important to young people who, of course, are central to nation building. The World Bank says that crime robs the economy of five per cent to six per cent additional growth. But its underlying argument is that the youth population needs more opportunities, and to the extent that they get them and take advantage of them, then crime will go down and growth will go up.
Business and Economy
Communities, of course, need a macroeconomy that is growing. Our ancestors might feel they would have not toiled in vain, nor would our children hope in vain by the following recent reports. Donald Buchanan has revealed that the 2006 Global Competitiveness Report placed Jamaica 21st out of 110 countries for low red tape and 25th for the quality of its ports. The World Investment Report put the country at 21st out of 144 as an Inward Investment Destination, and said that Jamaica was an over-performing Foreign Direct Investment Destination.
The Travel and Tourism Index for 2007 ranked Jamaica at 48th out of 128 countries for the attractiveness of its tourism product, third for policies and regulation, and 29th for theavailability of qualified labour. The Business Competitiveness Index for 2007 rated Jamaica at 53rd out of 116 countries for ease of doing business, and 54th for sophistication of company operations and the quality of the national business environment.
Harmony Cove's US$2 billion to US$4 billion investment is probably just a sign of things to come. For this Labour Day the signs are that our labour has not been in vain.
Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, Mona, UWI. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm.
