CHAIRMAN AND managing director of The Gleaner Company, Oliver Clarke, has called for stronger governance and city management and urged those paid to manage the city to do their jobs, or move out.
"Their incompetence is destroying the quality of our existence," Mr. Clarke said. He was speaking Friday night at a banquet to honour Custos of Kingston, Canon Weeville Gordon, who is retiring as rector of St. Matthew's Anglican Church in Allman Town, Kingston.
Mr. Clarke said that, "the Government must demonstrate its ability to govern more effectively and efficiently. There are too many scamps, from all over the place, growing fat from the corruption and incompetence that surrounds public contracts and their overruns."
He said that Jamaicans should also take some of the blame for the country's inability to balance the national budget.
It was up to Jamaicans to demand better Government and better value for the taxes paid, but to help to ease the problem by paying these taxes so that policemen can be paid, schools kept open and hospitals staffed with nurses, doctors and bandages, he said.
"We must all demand a financial environment in which persons who evade taxes and other social responsibilities are sanctioned and required to pay what is due. They are stealing from the rest of us that pay our obligations to finance public services," he told hundreds who turned out at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel, New Kingston.
He called on Jamaicans to use the year 2003 to make a choice between a crime free and peaceful nation or one overrun with criminals.
"It seems to me, we all need to regard 2003 as our potential Rubicon, a year in which we realise that we must continue to combine our efforts and repel crime and criminals and allow our land to return to one of tranquility and peace," he said.
He said that for peace to come, civil society, Government and the security forces need to say that enough is enough. He said that the public should pay their taxes and obey the laws and support members of the police force behaving in a professional way, by speaking up for them and encouraging them.
"In alliance, we can throw the drug barons, the extortionists and the criminals that daily devastate our city. Alone, we will probably perish," he said.
He said that the church members and other law-abiding citizens must either create pressure and a momentum which will force improved management of the environment and reduce the influence of criminals or allow criminals and others to inflict continued mental and physical anguish.
"I believe that we trample on the traditions set by the gentle and law-abiding Jamaicans. We trample these traditions, if we all leave here with anything on our minds other than a commitment to personally prevent our country's passage across the Rubicon."
