A matter of planning

Peter Espeut

Notice: Carib Cement Company was losing millions. New management takes over and makes certain changes, and now the company is making millions. Why? A matter of planning!

Notice: Life of Jamaica was losing billions. New management arrangements are put in place and now the same company is making millions. Why? A matter of careful planning.

When it comes to management, I don't believe that success or failure is simply a matter of kismet, of chance, of luck or of happenstance. Yes! You have to play the hand you draw, but you can match or you can read the game. Whether you win or lose may well be determined by how well you can read the game.

The same thing is true of public sector management. Guyana has the most land (resources) of any CARICOM country, with the least population per square mile; they have gold and diamonds and bauxite; but they are the poorest country in the region (next to Haiti). It has been often pointed out that Singapore - at the same level as ourselves in 1962 - is now almost a first-world country.

Japan has no natural resources to speak of, yet they are an industrial giant, creating trade surpluses with the biggest economies of the world. Japan has a 50-year planning horizon; they know more-or-less what they are going to do in 2025, and they are putting the resources in place.

I was in Barbados last week: an island like us, but much smaller; like us, born as an overseas plantation of Britain growing King Sugar, but which has diversified itself out of a plantation economy; a former colony like us, but now with a disciplined, educated population and a strong tourism industry.

This was not an accident. Barbados decided that national development depended on having an educated population, and their government put the necessary education system in place so that Barbados has the highest literacy rate in the Caribbean.

Jamaica decided that they would protect their sugar and banana industries by creating an illiterate labour force which could only ask for low wages; and Jamaica designed an education system to do the job.

Jamaica decided to attract investment by offering cheap labour, and the same education system created exactly that! Both Barbados and Jamaica decided what they each wanted, and they put the infrastructure in place to get it.

Never think that our education system is failing; it is doing exactly what it was designed to do!

In Barbados, I took the bus from the National Archives in St. James to my hotel in Hastings, on the other side of Bridgetown. It cost B$1.50 (about US$0.75 or J$34). The bus was clean and it got me there quickly. There was no music.

There were tourists on the bus, as well as Barbadians. It was a civilised system. Jamaica's bus system has improved in recent years, a testament to the good management of the politicians and civil servants in the Ministry of Transport. Hopefully it will continue to improve. It only goes to prove my point that when management is applied to a problem, it produces results.

I do not believe that Jamaica's system of garrison and tribal politics is an accident, that it just "happened". I believe that it has been carefully planned over the years by both JLP and PNP politicians and strategists. The creation of partisan ghettos is the natural result of a political system which distributes political spoils on a partisan basis.

The creation of hostile political tribes perpetually at war is the natural result of the way jobs and contracts and land and houses and other benefits paid for by the taxes of us all, are distributed.

The link between politics and guns is a natural result of the need to enforce political will at the community level, and the enthronement of area dons is an efficient way of protecting political turf and ensuring victory by 106 per cent of the vote. And the link between politics and drugs is the natural result of the need to finance the whole political system which is cash-hungry.

The point I am trying to make is that Jamaica does not have to be this way. We can have a better education system if the Ministry of Education decides to. We can castrate the monster of crime if our political leaders decide to sever their links with the criminals.

The only reason we have such frequent and widespread acts of police brutality is because the planners want it, and have taken steps to ensure that it does not stop.

The only reason we have such widespread corruption and conflict of interest is because the private sector wants it and the politicians want it and the institutional framework which is in place is designed to permit it.

We cannot improve while things remain the same. Carib Cement and now Jamaica Broilers have had to close their luxurious corporate offices to be really efficient. Before things can get better, someone has to pay the price of change.

And so we vainly seek economic growth and "development" while we strive to keep the corrupt system of crony capitalism intact. It will never work! The pie is too small! Our underdevelopment is carefully planned, as is the advancement of the chosen few. Who will break the cycle, the downward spiral?

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.

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