Building a Better Jamaica

MANDEVILLE (JIS):
Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Jamaicans are being urged not to buckle under current economic and social pressures, but rather to unite and find creative ways, which can benefit themselves and their communities.

This encouragement came from Principal of the Hydel Group of Schools, Senator Hyacinth Bennett, who gave the main address at a special function to honour five retired teachers of the Black River Primary and Infant School held recently at the St. Elizabeth-based institution.

"As we view our challenges as a people, this is clearly not the time for the blame game. The painful but plain truth is that the world is in a crisis, the proportion of which demands unprecedented responses," she stated.

"Let us fight back and convert our crisis into opportunities," Senator Bennett urged, suggesting for example, that "instead of closing the doors of our schools on weekends, evenings and holidays, how about mobilising a national voluntary teacher corps for the education and training of the large number of unskilled, uneducated young people."

The brains and brawn of the young people, she pointed out, "are key prerequisites to the successful task of producing our way out of the economic challenges".

Senator Bennett further called for a cessation in the importation of food items that can be grown locally. Noting that Jamaica has thousands of hectares of arable land, she said: "we, as a people, need to rewrite our own appetites and palates, eating what we grow."