A sad irony

THE EDITOR, Madam:

It is a sad irony that recently non-Jamaicans have turned the spotlight on a dark side of Jamaica, namely, the stark inequality between the ordinary Jamaican, meaning the vast majority earning a meagre income, and wealthy Jamaicans and wealthy interests – whether Jamaican or foreign.

I refer to just two areas, by way of example, in Jamaican life. These two areas are the denial of beach access to the ordinary Jamaican and the poor salaries and working conditions of hotel workers.

Recently, I have read a few articles in foreign publications on the injustice to ordinary Jamaicans by the denial of access to our beaches, a result of the continuing expansive construction of hotels and villas on the coasts. Recently, also, there has been local media coverage of protests by Jamaican workers at prominent hotels as to their poor salaries and working conditions.

Tourists who were interviewed on camera supported the protesters. In both these areas, therefore, non-Jamaicans have shone the spotlight on social injustice in Jamaica – the sad irony of which I speak.

What lesson can we learn from this irony? We continue to ignore the social injustice in our own country at our peril. This inequality deprives the ordinary Jamaican of his or her inherent dignity and breeds resentment which, in turn, eventually expresses itself in antisocial behaviour and crime.

Unless we as Jamaicans acknowledge our own social injustice and address what non-Jamaicans plainly see, then I fear that Jamaica – land I love – will not meet, in 2030 or at all, the goal to “be the place of choice to live, work, raise families and do business”.

NORMAN DAVIS