One of the most wasteful and stupid practices of successive Jamaican governments is to establish a new agency to deal with every new problem.
So taxpayers are forever saddled with several agencies overlapping each other and despite the fact that the country is now scraping the proverbial barrel to try and ward off insolvency, the logic of amalgamating agencies continues to evade us.
So it is with this in mind that I overwhelmingly welcome the move to finally amalgamate the JCF and ISCF (blue stripe and red stripe police) 20 years after it was recommended by the Wolfe Task force on crime! Is this a sign that we are finally coming to our senses?
I doubt it very much, for no where have I heard that anyone wants to restructure that expensive relic of colonialism, the army, to serve the best interests of the Jamaican people, so I suppose that we will continue to waste billions on that deadly institution for centuries to come, although we have no empire to protect. (Could they protect us from an invasion from Cayman anyway? I doubt it!)
What purpose does a fully fledged army serve? Sure we need a coast guard, an air wing and an engineering corp but shouldn't the thousands who make up the infantry be offered the opportunity to be retrained to serve and protect the people of Jamaica via the police force? Right now, these men have very little to do except act as bat men for the officer corp and occasionally, although they are not trained to do police work, they are sent in to terrorize people in the inner-cities.
It is pathetic to see these healthy young men being trained at Newcastle and no one would even think of giving them some paint and lumber to fix up their quarters there which is slowly but surely crumbling. Then after they are trained, they are wasted at camp. Such blatant under-utilization of human capital.
While we waste money and peoples lives on a redundant army, Costa Rica, situated in the midst of turmoil in Centrral America, abolished theirs in 1947 and diverted the resources to education. No wonder their per capita income is almost twice ours and the last time I visited there about two years ago, a friend was able to boast that they do not do manual labour but import Nicaraguans to do all their "dirty work."
Oh how thousands of our Jamaicans would love to get an opportunity to go there and do their "dirty work" while our governments continue to operate as a "one eye men in blind man country."
So taxpayers are forever saddled with several agencies overlapping each other and despite the fact that the country is now scraping the proverbial barrel to try and ward off insolvency, the logic of amalgamating agencies continues to evade us.
So it is with this in mind that I overwhelmingly welcome the move to finally amalgamate the JCF and ISCF (blue stripe and red stripe police) 20 years after it was recommended by the Wolfe Task force on crime! Is this a sign that we are finally coming to our senses?
I doubt it very much, for no where have I heard that anyone wants to restructure that expensive relic of colonialism, the army, to serve the best interests of the Jamaican people, so I suppose that we will continue to waste billions on that deadly institution for centuries to come, although we have no empire to protect. (Could they protect us from an invasion from Cayman anyway? I doubt it!)
What purpose does a fully fledged army serve? Sure we need a coast guard, an air wing and an engineering corp but shouldn't the thousands who make up the infantry be offered the opportunity to be retrained to serve and protect the people of Jamaica via the police force? Right now, these men have very little to do except act as bat men for the officer corp and occasionally, although they are not trained to do police work, they are sent in to terrorize people in the inner-cities.
It is pathetic to see these healthy young men being trained at Newcastle and no one would even think of giving them some paint and lumber to fix up their quarters there which is slowly but surely crumbling. Then after they are trained, they are wasted at camp. Such blatant under-utilization of human capital.
While we waste money and peoples lives on a redundant army, Costa Rica, situated in the midst of turmoil in Centrral America, abolished theirs in 1947 and diverted the resources to education. No wonder their per capita income is almost twice ours and the last time I visited there about two years ago, a friend was able to boast that they do not do manual labour but import Nicaraguans to do all their "dirty work."
Oh how thousands of our Jamaicans would love to get an opportunity to go there and do their "dirty work" while our governments continue to operate as a "one eye men in blind man country."
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