THE EDITOR, Sir:

In his article titled 'You CAN know it all' in The Gleaner (Monday, September 10, 2012), Robert Lalah expounded the virtues of information on diGJamaica and other social media, then informed us at the end that he was heading to Mandeville, a town "with a population of 191,378 ...".

I guess it is only fair to give Robert the benefit of the doubt and just say that he misread the facts. That figure quoted would more likely be an estimate of the population of the entire parish of Manchester, which was 185,267 in the 2001 census, since figures of the most recent census have not yet been released by STATIN. Mandeville's population then was a mere 47,467, which ranked it as Jamaica's sixth-largest town (after Kingston, Portmore, Spanish Town, Montego Bay and May Pen).

Such a growth of more than 400 per cent would be a virtual impossibility, especially with the decline of the bauxite industry, a pillar of the town's economic mainstay over the years.

With an annual growth rate of less than two per cent, it is quite unlikely that Robert, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be around to see the day when Mandeville's population exceeds 191,000!

Needless to say, if this is the type of info that is paraded on diGJamaica, there is bound to be a problem in "knowing it all".

TROY CAINE

trodencorp@gmail.com

EDITOR'S NOTE: Robert Lalah's column should have listed Manchester's population, and not Mandeville's, as 191,000. The statistic was accurately posted on diGJamaica.com.