Building a Better Jamaica

Posted: 2008-06-07, Written by: Mark Thompson 
Sunday Herald

Montego Bay:
Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett has identified Jamaica’s burgeoning crime problem as the single most debilitating factor assailing the nation’s tourism industry.

Speaking yesterday during a plenary session of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association’s (JHTA) 47th Annual General Meeting at Half Moon in Montego Bay, Bartlett described crime as the one area of worry beyond anything else that is currently impacting negatively on the industry.

“I must tell you that the fuel crisis is not as worrying to me as crime. The turmoil in the aviation industry is not as worrying to me as crime,” he revealed to a room full of hoteliers and tourism affiliates.

The minister noted that the establishment of firm partnerships with communities and the tourism industry would go a far way in driving a wedge in the “monster of crime” that is overtaking the society. He expressed the view that enhancement work in the communities through the Tourism Enhancement Fund (TEF)/Spruce Up Jamaica campaign will make community members feel the impact of the tourism dollar. 

“It is when we make the communities so embracing of tourism, so responsive to what tourism is doing for them, that they start to feel a jealousness and zealousness about protecting it and saving it from the monster of crime…when the community will (then) say no to any suggestion of attacking a tourist or anybody else for that matter.

 “More importantly…the community will flush out those who are determined to do injury to the process, because they know that there is a benefit accruing to them as a result of the industry.”

Bartlett elaborated that beyond embellishing the resort areas, the Spruce Up Jamaica campaign is about changing mindsets, redefining communities, reordering the relationships with the industry, and re-engaging tourism as the centre-piece of the economic development strategy of the country.

Wayne Cummings, president of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association, reiterated the minister’s concerns over crime, stating that the matter was now out of hand.

“It is not good enough for us to tell people that, ‘We don’t kill tourists here, we’re just killing each other’. We are killing each other at a rate that cannot be believed over…because we have not learned how to negotiate and solve out problems, and this starts in the home.

“I don’t care which commissioner (of Police) you have…I don’t care which Minister of National Security you get, although both are important, if Jamaican’s don’t decide to take back Jamaica, tourism, manufacturing etc., etc., etc., are doomed.”