Let's 'map' Jamaica's Diaspora to achieve growth

 Diane Abbott

The Government attempt to map the talent in the diaspora is a good thing.   The question, however, is having identified these talents, what will the Jamaican Government do with it to better the country and its people at home and abroad?

I am pleased that the Jamaican Government has set up the "Mapping Jamaica's Diaspora" project.  It is potentially a brilliant idea.   I have long argued that Jamaica's overseas diaspora is its greatest untapped natural resource.

The project is being driven by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade and they are working with the International Organisation for Migration.

Its aim is to identify, through an online survey, what skills the diaspora has, and what they can contribute to the development of Jamaica.   The survey is also designed to shed some light on what those of us in the diaspora think are the main issues facing us in our country of settlement.

I have dutifully filled in the survey and will wait to see what happens.

But, in the meantime, I would humbly suggest that ministers consider how they can maximise the value of the survey.

First of all, it needs to be more widely promoted so that people know about it.   I know of very few Jamaicans in the UK who have actually heard of it.   Most members of the Jamaican diaspora are going to have to be guided to it.   So it cannot just be a question of merely putting it up online.

The Jamaican Government should work with churches and other grass roots organisations in order to get them to rally their members to fill it in.

There are at least 650,000 people of Jamaican heritage living in the UK — many more if you count the second and third generations.   Hundreds of thousands of those will be connected to one of the black-led churches.   They should be the go-to partners for any serious survey of Jamaica's diaspora.

I assume that the Government has sent details of the survey to the many different Jamaican organisations out there, whether they are national or linked to a particular town.

These organisations will be particularly valuable in targeting middle-aged Jamaicans who do not naturally spend a lot of time online.   Because there will be this group of Jamaicans who will not find the survey online, because they never go online, the survey must be supplemented by other forms of research and data collection.

The danger in a survey restricted to online users is that, with no other supporting activity, it will fall short in documenting the diaspora in a genuinely useful way.

The Jamaican Government should also organise market research-type "focus groups" in all the towns of cities of Britain where there are large Jamaican populations.

This would add qualitative information to the merely numerical. This would cost money.  But I suspect that the International Organisation for Migration is not working on this project for free.

So the same international organisations that are paying for that work could also pay to employ marketing and other experts to do a really thorough survey of Jamaicans and their descendants in the UK.

Then, once the survey is completed, the question is what will the Jamaican Government do with the information?

Having identified these talents, what will the Jamaican Government do with it to better the country and its people at home and abroad?

They have said they want to use the mapping exercise to support the development of a logistics hub, by identifying men and women with maritime industry, logistics, shipping and engineering experience.

Government has also intimated that it wants to advance the creative industries, such as animation and developing mobile apps.

If Government has these specific goals, in terms of identifying skills and talents, maybe they should also be approaching professional organisations and universities, encouraging them to identify people of Jamaican origin or affiliation within their ranks.

Professionals of Jamaican origin who have applied for jobs in the public sector back in Jamaica have sometimes felt unwelcome.

It would be a shame for the Government to go to all this trouble to identify skilled Jamaicans overseas yet still continue to recruit expatriates who are not obviously of Jamaican origin.  We wait and see.

But "Mapping Jamaica's Diaspora" is a great project and, with a little tweaking, can make an important contribution to Jamaica's economic development.

— Diane Abbott is the British Labour Party MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington www.dianeabbott.org.uk

August 03, 2014

Jamaica Observer

Which political party is best for Jamaica... PNP or JLP?

Which party is best for Jamaica?

By Franklin JOHNSTON

The PNP is the natural party of the Jamaican people.  The first and only party to adumbrate a mantra for the disadvantaged and social institutions to give it effect.  This was attractive to the grandchildren of slaves who prized their freedoms.  Norman Manley was driven.  A soldier, athlete, Rhodes scholar, he knew political dogma - the strait-jacket of communism and capitalism.  He chose the middle ground which social democratic parties in Germany, UK, Italy, Greece, Scandinavian nations used to build world-class industry and great welfare systems.  Bustamante was not of this ilk.  He went to primary school, was a rolling stone - Cuba, Panama, America - policeman, hospital orderly, investor; changed his name on a whim and returned home in his 50s with some money.  He was an activist; joined a union, founded his own and used his talent to help workers with success.  He founded the JLP on "sibling rivalry" - a contest with his "educated cousin".  The JLP still reacts to the PNP.  We say to kids, "See Mr Manley, his life, study, law career, service in politics... copy him!" You can't tell kids to copy Bustamante's life!  The JLP's capitalist mantra lies between his "we are with the West" and Seaga's "haves and have-nots".  The JLP is mainly a spiritual vacuum, but the ascendancy of Adventist ethic in leadership in the last four years may change this.  The benign union of church and state and the clique of Adventist fundamentalist right-wingers in Cabinet is ominous. More anon!

The PNP is also the omni-directional creative, cultural and sporting home of the nation.  The vision of Norman Manley - world-class sportsman, lawyer, art connoisseur and bon vivant - is breathtaking.  An inspiration to Jamaicans here and abroad.  Bustamante's life was rambling and we have anecdotes often which he supplied, not facts. But the drama of what we know is compelling.  He loved his cousin, shared successes.  Manley outfoxed the British.  They trusted, respected him; he fought with them in war, studied with them at Oxford, held forth in their courts, they knew his commitment and performance and he knew them!

The PNP is the spiritual home of the nation.  Drumblair was the hub of artistic expression; the energy of our creative class.  Liberal jargon as freedom, economic independence, decolonisation, equality, class struggle, environment, self-reliance, Nkrumah, Lumumba, Africa are the legacy of PNP semanticists.  The UWI was said to be PNP just by being a place of intellect.  The spirit of craft, cottage industry, domestic work; gender equality, child equality, shade equality were nurtured by conscious people, many not PNP but classed as such.  The JLP went the other way. Bustamante was educated, but he used a folksy illiteracy which attracted poor people yet they retreated as it devalued education.  Some recidivism is still evident at meetings where there is a striving of educated JLP people to appear less so and diss education to curry favour with poor people - a paradox of politics! The PNP also got "street cred"; many "buttos" had free rein and principles suffered. Mr Seaga nurtured Kapo but the JLP never bought into his artistic genius.  The JLP as a capitalist party has never been of artistic or spiritual trenchancy.

The PNP is the spiritual home of the media.  Its leaders marched and demonstrated when media workers were disadvantaged and fired; meanwhile the JLP were banning speakers, books, writings and UWI lecturers.  I smuggled books, was interminably searched by customs and had my books confiscated.  Every journalist over 50 - not media owners - is a virtual PNP sleeper because of its track record on their behalf.  Early PNP leaders sacrificed; politics was not their best job; their families suffered.  After the PM's job they did public service - spoke globally and served the Commonwealth.  They lived in their pre-politics houses and died with less than when they started politics.  Their children's legacy was a good education, not money or a business.  Ex-JLP top brass expressed their capitalism in finance; new houses, business to capitalise on their years in politics.  No global speakers emerged.  People rightly worry about JLP corruption as they expect it, but they wrongly ignore PNP corruption because they think them high-minded - both are wrong.  If the PNP mantra also resonated with other ethnic groups, they came on contract, indenture, fleeing persecution and it was PNP social openness, not JLP restrictive capitalism, that attracted them. So where is this going?

The big question

Why is the PNP not more successful at the polls?  Given this love affair, how come they won only eight elections to the JLP's seven since 1944?  What are we missing?  What is the PNP doing wrong or the JLP doing right?

The answer?

The JLP is filler when people want to punish the PNP and sometimes it delivers the goods!  First, despite his work, Norman did not lead us to Independence.  Was the referendum principle or naivety?  No matter; he did not get the nod.  Second, Michael's self-reliance which makes Cuba the region's innovator in health industries, education and housing, even with two hands tied by a USA blockade, did not get the nod.  Third, Finsac is a metaphor for woes.  The USA used debt resolution with dozens of failed banks and building societies.  Here, true to its mantra, the PNP rescued hundreds of thousands of small savers.  The few thousand investors and bankers had to face the nightmare of all entrepreneurs who use poor people's savings to build themselves - grief!  Finally, the PNP has not explained how in 18 years of unbroken power when the world was prospering we could not even catch up with Barbados.  So has the PNP squandered our generosity?  Is the JLP stability just the usual calm after an IMF loan boosts our cash flows?  More to come. Stay conscious, my friend!

Coat of arms or jacket?

Last week arriving passengers were told by NMIA Immigration their completed forms were illegal.  The reason?  The coat of arms was wrong?  The crab louse was upside down or such?  Who printed them?  It did seem more jacket than coat!  The explanations were confusing. Tired tourists and locals were not amused.

Dr Franklin Johnston is an international project manager with Teape-Johnston Consultants currently on assignment in the UK.

franklinjohnstontoo@gmail.com

jamaicaobserver

Say a prayer for Jamaica this Christmas

One of the ways in which the global recession is beginning to impact disposable incomes of people in the Caribbean is the fact that governments throughout the region have sought, or will seek, to raise taxes. With three days to go before the last Christmas of the first decade of the 21st century, it may have been a little unusual to see parliamentarians in Port-of-Spain debating legislation as fundamental as the major reform to the country’s system of property taxation. One of the points about the proposed property tax is that it seeks to provide the Government with a substantial new revenue plank at a time when the country’s revenue base has been challenged by the sharp decline in earnings from the country’s energy sector. The fact is that the Government forecasts that it will earn $37.9 billion in revenue from all sources in the fiscal year October 2008 to September 2009. This is a 39 per cent decline in tax revenue from the year before.

Based on an assumption of an oil price of US$55 per barrel and a natural gas price of US$2.75 per million cubic feet, the Government predicts that total revenue for the current fiscal year will amount to $36.6 billion. But while the decision by the Government to proceed with the new property tax has led to a great deal of heat, T&T nationals should consider the situation in which our neighbours to the north find themselves. In Jamaica, the Minister of Finance last week tabled in their Parliament the third set of revenue-raising measures for their fiscal year which ends in April. The Jamaican economy has been devastated by the sharp decline in its three main sources of foreign earnings: taxes on its alumina and bauxite resources, revenue collected from tourists who visit the island, and money sent to Jamaicans by friends and family members living in the US, Canada and the UK.

Jamaica has also been impacted by years of living beyond its means—by spending significantly more than it collects—with budgets over the years being balanced only because the country has been able to borrow from international and local banks at ever-increasing interest rates. But with three credit rating agencies downgrading Jamaica’s foreign debt to levels that indicate that there is an expectation that the country will not be able to service its debts, there are few commercial banks that would be brave enough to lend Jamaica money—even if banks the world over did not face liquidity concerns. As a result of global downturn and its own lack of fiscal prudence over the last three decades, the country has been forced back into the arms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—with which Jamaica has had a fractious relationship.

In preparation for the new stand-by agreement with the IMF, the Jamaican Government has been placed in the invidious position of having to announce a punitive package of new and increased taxes a little more than a week before that country celebrates Christmas. Among the measures that were announced in the Jamaican Parliament to be implemented on January 1 were an increase in the general consumption tax (GCT) from 16.5 per cent to 17.5 per cent and an expansion in the tax base of the GCT to include many food items such as fresh fruit and vegetables, ground provisions, sugar, salt, flour and cooking oil. Jamaica’s Minister of Finance also announced increases in the taxes on electricity and gasoline. Prime Minister Bruce Golding, who made an unannounced visit to Port-of-Spain last Wednesday as the country seeks to divest its national air carrier, made it clear in a statement on Sunday that he has no choice but to raise taxes.

“I urge the Jamaican people to understand that our choices are extremely limited and there is no easy way out. Our current revenues cannot meet our required expenditures and we cannot continue to borrow our way into an even worse crisis,” said Mr Golding. While we say a prayer for our brothers and sisters in Jamaica, we also need to learn from them the dangers of living beyond our means.

22 Dec 2009

caribdaily

Bahamas Caribbean Blog International