AN IMPORTANT piece of news emerged last week, which, we hope,
will gain the requisite attention of policymakers and begin to have a serious
bearing on how they allocate resources.
For it underlines the fact that there are better ways to tackle poverty than merely talking about commitment to the poor or just throwing money at the problem with big, wasteful, unstructured crash programmes.
At a Gleaner Editors' Forum on Thursday, Mrs. Betty Stockhausen, the executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce of Jamaica (AmCham) reported that property values were on the increase in the Grants Pen area of the capital.
People are going about their normal business in the community, and commerce, if not thriving, is not as sickly as it used to be. At least, enterprises are not shutting down as they once were, with their principals fleeing.
"I think very soon, we are going to see more businesses coming to Grants Pen," Mrs. Stockhausen said.
To belabour the obvious, businesses going to Grants Pen translate to economic activity, including more jobs in the community. People who have jobs often want to keep them, assured of the resources to help improve the quality of their lives.
It is significant that the change being wrought in Grants Pen is not coming from huge allocation of cash by the Government for spending on mega-projects in the area. And so far as we are aware, there is no 'make work' or 'let-off' enterprises in operation. Rather, higher
property values which, really, is an index of confidence, is a result of an easing of crime in an area that had the reputation of being among the most volatile in Kingston.
What has happened over the past year or so is that a model police station has been established in the area as a joint project between AmCham, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Jamaican Government. There is an attempt at what, for a better term, is called community policing, including relationship-building between law enforcement agencies and Grants Pen residents. There is also dialogue between Grants Pen and its affluent nearby communities, thereby reducing tensions.
These things have worked, or, are working. The lesson to policymakers is the need for their replication in troubled communities across Jamaica, and more so the volatile inner-city ones in the capital. It is significant that the Grants Pen project is not particularly expensive in terms of money. The big expenditure here is in vision, time, effort and hard work.
Of course, we do not expect that things will go in one continuous, straight line. There will be ups and downs, for the problems of communities like Grants Pen are old and deep. But it provides an example of what is possible with some government and community will, laying the basis for private sector endeavour.
Or looked at another way, Grants Pen hints of what could happen in Jamaica if the private sector was given the appropriate environment.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
