Editorial | Ministry of Small Things

When Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ new administration gets into gear following the September 3 general election, among the big things that should be on its agenda is doing the small things – and getting them right. And the effort must be consistent and sustained.

The administration will find that the returns are beyond the obvious and its expectations.

Several factors, however, are likely to mitigate against this approach.

First, Jamaica’s governments are notorious for liking seemingly big standout projects, the policy equivalent to shiny objects and statement pieces, regardless of their real impact on the national economy and people’s lives. The more expensive, the better. These projects, if they are actually launched, come to fruition and become accessories of sorts, to burnish the legacies and images of the politicians associated with them.

Further, once they enter government without clarity of thought and a well-honed mission, ministers are soon consumed by the tyranny of the immediate, buffeted from crisis to crisis. In this fog, they lose perspective.

It is in this context that The Gleaner repeats its long-standing suggestion that even as it struggles with the big policy questions and statement projects, the administration must attend, with deliberation, things that directly impact how people live in, and engage with, their communities and their sense of well-being.

LAMENTED

This newspaper, for instance, has consistently lamented the seeming inability of the Jamaican authorities to either organise or follow through on a structured maintenance of government facilities and public infrastructure, acting only at an inevitable crisis, when the fix is horrendously expensive.

Cynical people might believe that rather than signifying a weakness of financial or management capacity, it represents, at least in part, a deliberate strategy of allowing the erosion, thereby requiring greater expenditure at refurbishment. That then presents better opportunities for the preferred bidder(s) who line up for the contracts.

Indeed, an ongoing peeve of this newspaper is the authorities’ failure to consistently trim the verges, clean gutters, drains and gullies or develop (we note the SPARK Programme) credible road maintenance arrangements. Or doing clearly manageable bits before minor community inconveniences morph into national crises.

For instance, it beggars the imagination why after the excavation of a road by, say, the National Water Commission to fix a broken pipe and the hole has been rudely filled in, the scarred, unpaved section remains in a state of repair for weeks or months. In the meantime, the exposed earth expands and deepens, posing dangers for motorists and pedestrians.

It is in a pothole from a similar circumstance that a hapless Venroy Blackwood of Ridge Penn, St Elizabeth, drowned in October 2024, having fallen from his bicycle at night into a pool of stagnant water. He was apparently neither in a physical nor mental condition to save himself.

Too often, as minor maintenance is not done, the paved gullies that drain the capital’s Liguanea Plains and its overlooking hills from the east to the sea in the west, become clogged with garbage, especially plastics. Sometimes small islands, with large trees on them, develop in the gully courses. Then there is a mad rush to clean them during the hurricane season – especially if a storm is headed to Jamaica.

This, of course, is not a problem only for Kingston and St Andrew. It is replicated across Jamaica.

ROAD SIGNS

Given Jamaica’s annually high vehicle crashes and fatalities, over which public officials regularly lament, it would seem logical that road signs and signals would be regularly maintained; that median lines and other traffic aides would be brightly painted and regularly refreshed. This ought not to be a high-cost exercise, unless the job goes to an overly expensive contractor when it is done.

It is inexplicable, too, that cable crash barriers along the Palisadoes Road, a tombolo from Harbour View, in east Kingston, to the Norman Manley International Airport, remain in disrepair and rusty several years after being damaged by vehicles. Or why evergreens planted on the sidewalks of downtown Kingston for shade and aesthetics are mostly unpruned, until the danger they pose to electrical cables lead to their unrefined slashing.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Holness announced a plan to regularise the names of roads across the island. That’s a good idea. Except that at most roads, while the metal posts remain in place, the plates with the names are missing, either from mischief or vehicle crashes. Or the whole thing is so badly bent or disfigured, it’s a bet to determine for which road the sign was erected.

Occasionally, the signs are repaired. But the cycle repeats itself. It would be simpler, and cheaper, to bolt a plate with the road’s name on a building or wall.

Sporadically, someone gets into a frenzy and repairs a clock in a town square and/or develops a mural around it. But the effort quickly lapses. The facility soon returns to dereliction.

And as happened in Half-Way Tree several years ago, in an initiative led by the police with the help of the Fire Brigade, the square was washed off its rank odour and garbage. But in the absence of ongoing efforts the squalor drifts back.

The bottomline: cleaning drains, collecting garbage and trimming verges have public health value. They help to reduce the spread of vermin and disease.

But it also does something more. When people live and operate in clean and generally aesthetically pleasing environments, they are more likely to feel good about themselves and their communities. They are, in those circumstances, less likely, all things being equal, to engage in anti-social behaviour that results in endemic crime and social instability. Clean, relatively well-kept communities also increase property value and people’s wealth.

So, doing the small things and getting them right is an investment with good economic and social returns. While we are wary of expansive bureaucracy, perhaps Dr Holness should consider a Ministry of Small Things to put things right.