Commentary
As Jamaicans continue to dig their way out of the massive disaster left by Hurricane Melissa, this newspaper is also paying attention to the COP30 climate conference in Belém, Brazil. For what happens in Belém will help to determine not just how...
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Last week, the presidents of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), the Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association (JMEA) and the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce (JCC) wrote a letter to Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness regarding the...
Bad news comes in threes as Melissa, then her aftermath, were two of the worst but now the Old Ball and Chain is outraged at Digicel. So we’ve no choice but to experience a third storm. Old BC: I don’t know why Old Grey Balls is being so...
Unless the recommended restructuring of the government’s disaster management system was only for a change of its top leader, last week’s shake-up at the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) in the midst of the agency’s...
The Minister is right. Each local school board has the practical and legal responsibility to determine how and when to resume school after Melissa.The role of government is to harvest the most urgent needs of each institution and to respond to...
In the previous articles in this series, I expressed the opinion that at present it appears that Jamaica will change from a monarchical form of Constitution to a republican form but that the parliamentary cabinet system will be retained. Should...
In these trying times for the environmental movement, it can sometimes feel impossible to find the (solar-powered) light. In September the International Day of Preservation of the Ozone Layer (or World Ozone Day), we remembered one of the world’s...
Melissa, the horrendously intense category 5 hurricane that smashed through western Jamaica nearly a fortnight ago, did not simply tear up infrastructure and take lives. Although plenty of that happened. Indeed, so far, 32 people are known to have...
Some of the main aspects of Jamaica’s relationship with the United States of America within the Caribbean Sea are governed by the Agreement Concerning Cooperation in Suppressing Illicit Maritime Drug Trafficking between both countries. This...
Jamaica has been placed in what is, perhaps, the weakest qualification group – Jamaica, Bermuda, Curaçao and Trinidad and Tobago – ever created in the history of the World Cup. If the Reggae Boyz do not qualify from this group, they should be...
Sunday is a day of rest for them, because the popular Jamaican folk song reports; our turkey vultures, “John Crow, say him no wuk pon Sunday.” Her logic might sound as if sucked into the eye of hurricane Melissa. However, during the press briefing...
Category 5 hurricane Melissa was described as “catastrophic” as it approached our shores, and then rapidly transformed from a tropical storm into a monstrous hurricane packing wind gusts of up to 387.85 kph (241 mph). That speed was recorded at a...
Each day reveals more of the damage left behind by Hurricane Melissa. The Category 5 hurricane battered Jamaica’s western parishes — St Elizabeth, Westmoreland, Hanover, St James, and parts of Trelawny — leaving communities in ruins. Among the...
The first time I met Jamaicans at Canada Hall of The University of the West Indies (UWI) in Trinidad, initially, it was scary. I had just become the hall chairman when a huge Jamaican youth was coming at me, screaming angrily at the top of his...
For the powerful, sovereignty is a sword; for the small, it must remain a shield Sovereignty is supposedly the cornerstone of international order: the formal declaration that every state has the right to govern itself, protect its territory, and...
Andrew Holness has put the issue of subterranean power lines back on Jamaica’s agenda, but the matter, in the current circumstances, insists on a deeper, and more urgent, discussion than the prime minister allowed in his comment on the question in...
