CRUNCH MODE

Holness foresees more jobs than workers in next 10 years, bemoans impact of crime on human resources

Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness (third left) joins Professor Gordon Shirley (left), president and CEO, Port Authority of Jamaica (PAJ), and other officials in breaking ground for the port expansion in Kingston on Thursday. Occasion was the contract signing/groundbreaking for Westlands Port Expansion at Kingston Freeport. Also pictured are Captain Jedrzej Mierzewski (third right), CEO, Kingston Freeport Terminals Holding; Senator Aubyn Hill (second right), minister of industry and commerce; and Emmanuel Delachambre (right), senior vice-president, CMA Terminals Holding.

Jamaica is losing its human resource to crime and may not be able to find the labour force necessary to carry the country’s projected growth over the next 10 years – “a real problem”, according to Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness.

“You are going to feel the crunch in the next decade, the decade coming, even though you are starting to see it now. But it is something that we really have to think about,” charged Holness.

Holness was delivering the keynote address at yesterday’s groundbreaking and contract-signing ceremony for the Westland Expansion project, which will result in a more than 25 per cent increase in container-storage space at the Kingston port. The initiative is a partnership between the Port Authority of Jamaica and the Kingston Freeport Terminal Limited and is an investment of more than US$80 million.

The initiative represents a vision for growth and national ambition, utilising Jamaica’s geographical location to create the fastest-growing transshipment hub in the region, charged Holness. It is a plan favourable to international investors and is hinged on stable legal and constitutional frameworks to settle matters quickly and fairly; an efficient financial and economic system that facilitates easy repatriation of profit to foreign entities; and one where businesses and their employees feel safe and secure.

Already, the Government has been making headway in all three, Holness said, explaining, however, that crime and violence continue to eat away at the country’s human resources and must be addressed firmly for Jamaicans to benefit from opportunities to come. The gangsters are blocking their future and that of others, he charged, noting that for too long, crime had been looked at mainly as a matter of social inequality.

“There comes a time when society has to look at itself and say, ‘Can we excuse this, or are we going to address it?’ The crime and violence, which we believe comes from a dispossessed youngster in an inner city, ... that youngster is actually preventing yours and his own development.

“If we put in new containers, new jobs, we are going to need new people to work here, and where are they? They are in the gangs, toting guns. We are losing the human resource that could be very useful here, and these are not low-paying jobs,” he remarked. “And when you present the option to them, and say, ‘Come, we will train you, give you the stipend to come and get trained’, they have been so caught up in the gang world that their attitude is a barrier to their progress. Society cannot continue to be ambivalent in this matter.”

As it relates to the easy movement of profits to overseas parent companies, which Holness said he expected to get dissonance on locally, the prime minister argued: “If you stop and think about it, people are not going to move their foreign exchange if they know they can get it when they want it. It sounds counterintuitive, but people are [actually} going to move their foreign exchange when they believe they can’t get it when they want it,” he said.

Holness reiterated plans to realign Marcus Garvey Drive and relocate the neighbouring Tinson Pen Aerodrome to make more room for the island’s major port and also announced a partnership among the Port Authority of Jamaica, Kingston Wharves Limited, the Jamaica Customs Agency, and the National Works Agency to improve the road conditions in the area.

In the meantime, Professor Gordon Shirley, president of the Port Authority of Jamaica, says the expansion of the Westland Port at the Kingston Freeport Terminal will help boost the country’s economy. The westlands are located between the existing port and the Causeway.

“With the addition of the westlands, with the space available to the KFTL terminal operation, an impressive growth rate is expected to be further enhanced, and Kingston will remain on track to become the fastest growing and the largest cargo terminal in the region. The PAJ is, therefore, pleased to participate today with the KFTL in signing of the Westland agreement and in breaking ground for the construction of the expanded terminal storage area,” he said.

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