The Editor, Sir:

Much talk about job creation and foreign direct investment is not producing economic growth or employment.

Jamaican contractors who hire Jamaican workers are not getting in on the contracts. We have to mandate that Jamaican companies get contractors or sub contractors on all projects. In some countries, oppressed minorities receive a certain minimum portion of large projects. Our oppressed majority is kept out of major projects.

The current flow of foreign direct investments into Jamaica is enough, if significant portions are channelled to local contractors, to put a smile on the faces of the People's National Party, Jamaica Labour Party and all the other Jamaican contractors and their workers.

Government simply has to mandate that food is channelled to local contractors. If people get work, money will run and crime will go down.

Bauxite industry

Most Jamaicans do not know that the bauxite industry is not rocket science. It is a simple matter of bulldozers scrapping off top soil, then loading red dirt into trucks which take it to a central point for a crude processing (which results in a thousand-fold more environmental destruction than from all the development projects which NEPA rejects in a year).

The most significant activity is this scraping off top soil - truck loading and transportation - and some of this is contracted to locals. Government needs to mandate that all of this be contracted to locals at rates that make sense. The little bauxite levy and hourly rate jobs are just a pittance of what can and should be going into the Jamaican economy.

I am, etc.,

STAFFORD EARLE

stafango@gmail.com

Cave,Westmoreland