Transport operators need a stimulus
Dear Editor,
The Transport Operators Development Sustainable Services (TODSS) is calling on the Government, through the Ministry of Finance, to consider a second stimulus package for the island’s public transport sector.
Despite the fact that 80 per cent of the sector did not get any support from the COVID-19 stimulus package earlier this year, we believe that the Government could consider us this time as the end of the pandemic is nowhere in sight and could get worse if the new wave now affecting several other countries begins to impact Jamaica.
The sector, which has been undergoing financial strain for the past eight years, including the absence of a fare increase despite increases in operating costs of between 200 per cent and 400 per cent — a condition which either sent scores of operators into early retirement or experiencing a reduction of business by as much as 65 per cent in daily income.
One of the major problems in the sector at this time is that some 18 per cent of the sector’s investors are having their units repossessed by financial institutions due to their inability to pay outstanding loans.
The sector is under great strain to continue to provide service to the commuting public, hence the need for some form of stimulus, especially in light of the fact that face-to-face classes are returning for some schools this month.
We would be grateful for discussion with the Government to communicate our present plight at this time.
E Newman
President
Transport Operators Development Sustainable Services transopsdevelop@yahoo.com
inflation rate for consumer prices with it moving between 2.4 per cent and 77.3 per cent. Hence, from 1979 to 2019, the average inflation rate was 15.9 per cent per year. Overall, the price increases were 28,557.33 per cent. An item that cost $100 in 1979 would cost $28,657.33 at the beginning of 2020 (source: www.worlddata.info).
The political and economic turmoil is supported by the presence of gangs, especially those aligned with the two political parties. Since 1978 to the end of 2020 we have murdered over 39,165 Jamaicans. In 1978 homicides average 381. In 2017 it peaked at 1,641, and in 2020 we ended the year at 1,303.
Horace Levy’s piece in The Agenda of the Sunday Observer ‘Let’s try the COVID-19 model for homicides’, published on January 3, 2021, stated that if the prime minister, who has responsibility for security, is to take the homicide crisis in personal hand and mobilise state resources and the country to control it, the first step must be to analyse the problem, apply science in this analysis, and share it with people. “Every illness must be diagnosed before it can be properly treated — that is just common sense. And if science has something to offer in this regard, why has it been totally ignored in respect of homicide?” Levy asked.
Columnist Jason Mckay postulates that, “Gangsters who happen to be Jamaican and live in Jamaica are killing each other at an extraordinary rate. There is only about 10,000 of them out of custody at any one time and, based on the 78 per cent theory, they killed 930 of their own kind this year” (Sunday Observer, January 3, 2021).
We can’t mobilise to solve the homicides until we recognise and address this historical difference in who we are, “a different African — derived population”.