MR Gordon "Butch" Stewart is right. Speaking recently at the launch of the Observer's annual Business Leaders Awards, he called attention to the difficulties that businesses in general and small entrepreneurs in particular are experiencing doing business in Jamaica. He lamented the strangulating bureaucracy that stymies businesses and which results in the loss of valuable productive time.
Mr Stewart's concern is in line with what others have said before, including Mr Phillip Paulwell, the former Minister of Industry and Commerce, when he made the cryptic statement that Jamaica is a place that is inhospitable to investment. As long as I have been alive, the country has been living through the gyrations of the obstacles that are placed in the path of those who would want to put their entrepreneurial energy to work. Jamaica is an entrepreneur's nightmare, especially when as an entrepreneur you have to contend with government and its departments. You make phone calls, people promise to return your calls and you wait and wait for that call to come, not realising that you have been given a six for a nine. You get the impression that the promises to return your calls were done simply to get you off the line quickly. And never make the mistake of calling a government agency with a cellphone, especially if you are calling from a Digicel phone. I had the rude realisation recently that all landlines are LIME lines, and that if you call from, say, a Digicel phone to one of these lines you are paying the highest rate per minute that is available in the marketplace (which I believe to be $12.00 per minute from Digicel to C&W lines. Bear in mind that most, if not all government departments use landlines as do most private sector companies. LIME still maintains a monopoly of landlines in Jamaica, so do the math.
You make a big mistake if you ever sound irascible or disagreeable to a government bureaucrat as you are likely to be "punished" by having your matter ignored. It is like arguing with an attendant in a restaurant: a cockroach is likely to be stir-fried in your serving! And what is the matter with our customs officers who serve at the front line of our ports of entry, especially our airports? What does one have to do to get a smile or a suggestion of pleasantness from these folks when they attend to you?
Let it not be believed that this is a problem in the public sector only. The private sector is a little better since greater accountability is demanded of workers, but you can get the same kind of runaround. I know that members of the public can be quite abrasive and rude, but there is a polite way to deal with the most abrasive consumer. Whether in the government sector or the private sector it should never be forgotten that the consumer is king, which does not mean that you have to abide his putrid idiosyncrasies, but recognising that you are there to serve and in a real sense he pays your salary.
There is one government department which it is a joy to do business with, and this is the National Land Agency. The service has vastly improved since the agency was created. The staff is very polite and you get the impression of a group of people who really do understand the virtue of hard work and the correlation between efficiency and productivity. This is not directly under their jurisdiction, but it is hard to fathom why a two-lot subdivision has to take close to one year to be issued a certificate of completion when everything else has been complied with. Again, I do not think that this is any fault of the agency, but it is equally puzzling why the sale of land which involves just a cash transaction (cash being exchanged for land) should take more than two months to complete.
Work at Customs is being vastly improved thanks to the tenacity of Mr Danville Walker. Under the watchful eyes of Mr Greg Christie and hopefully the obduracy of Mr Daryl Vaz, there is a greater efficiency being seen in the execution of contracts. The overruns and lag time on important projects have been vastly removed, although one cannot understand why the mere widening of the dual carriageway at Bogue in Montego Bay is taking such a long time to complete. Minister Henry needs to light some fire under the tail of the contractors.
Ultimately, what it all boils down to is the cultivation of an ethic of hard work; to understand that work is not just about the collection of a salary or wage at the end of the week or month; that there is an essential spiritual fulfilment that derives from the work we do and the humanity that is attended to in that work. No reorganisation of government bureaucracy or rationalisation of the public sector will bear any lasting fruit if a better attitude to work with a new culture of productivity that buttresses this work is not allowed to thrive. This calls for recognition of the personal responsibility and accountability that each worker, whether in the private or public sector, should have for the work or job for which he or she is being paid. We will never become a developed country by 2030 with the kind of work ethic that we have in Jamaica. The time to cultivate that new work ethic which will lead to a new psychology of productivity is now. Every single entity that hires somebody should place this at the very top of its agenda.
stead6655@aol.com
www.drraulston.com
September 04, 2010
jamaicaobserver
