Mark Wignall | More scandalous than scandal bags smuggling

“Customs is an issue which touches a number of areas. Obviously, we will be concerned about the environmental impact from bags that we know are not being produced here, which means they have to be coming through our ports,” said Matthew Samuda in the Jamaica Observer.

“We will work with Customs to ensure that we tighten the screws and we identify those who are seeking to break our laws,” said Samuda, who is the minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation as he tackled the creeping smuggling of scandal (plastic) bags of the type and sizes that are supposed to be officially banned.

Daryl Vaz announced the ban on certain sizes scandal bags three years ago. Since that time, vendors at all levels have generally complied with the new regime, and many shoppers have taken to the habit of purchasing multiple use, vendor-branded bags. It has not surprised me that illegal importation of the officially banned bags is now on. The smuggler prefers it this way simply because there is much money to be made.

Without knowing exactly who are the miscreants, that is, the persons who prefer to operate illegally, one has to be careful that early conclusions do not tar those in Customs who ‘know the ropes’ and, therefore, know best how to circumvent the laws at this time when a windfall is to be made.

Our people are not all that concerned about environmental matters, especially where it is not essentially a pile of garbage blocking their driveway. But at times we surprise ourselves. In 1999, when seat-belt use was made mandatory, it was my private view that it would not quite work out. Based on my observations, I was quite wrong on that.

BRANDED BAGS

On my way to the supermarket I will grab one of many branded bags I have stored in a three-tier basket in the kitchen. Sometimes as I enter the supermarket, it will dawn on me that I have left it in the car in the parking lot, or I had left it in the kitchen so that I can forget it at the next grocery shopping trip. The lady never forgets it.

At the roadside fruit and vegetable vendor, I am always feeling the guilt as I say, “Yu can tief a bag an gi mi.” Of course there is always one to be had along with both of us flashing smiles.

At the bar, the nearest bar, or, for that matter, just about every bar in Jamaica, the sale of illegally imported cigarette is carried out right in the open. No one complains simply because the illegal ones are much cheaper than those sold by Carreras. And of course, I need not remind you that that company is heavily taxed.

So while the young Minister Samuda concentrates on trying to plug the loopholes in the illegal importation of scandal bags, it has to dawn on our policymakers and the security ministry that the seemingly open illegal importation of cigarettes could be funding a significant part of our long embrace with gun criminality.

THEY DON’T PRETEND TO HIDE IT

I have witnessed many instances where men and women well known to bar owners and bartenders enter and exchange various sale quantities of these illegal cigarettes for cash. The bar owners know that even though many among the more educated and aware class elements have turned their backs on openly smoking in bars (that, too, is outlawed but laughingly flouted), cigarettes, like white rum, are a big seller.

Most bar owners make an economic decision that leaves no space for abiding by the law. When crucial economic decisions are placed alongside the illegality, especially where enforcement is totally absent, the bigger message to the bar owner is that since every bar is buying them and doing a brisk business in selling them, it is quite okay for me to do it.

To add a perverse sweet insult to the absence of any injury, many bars carry the dual message placed in their walls. No smoking. No illegal cigarettes sold here. Ha, ha, ha!

NEW QUEEN OF THE MAROONS?

The Jamaica Observer of April 21 reported that there was a new queen in town. According to that publication, the paramount chieftainess and Queen of the Maroons of Jamaica, Gamaang Gloria Simms, is that queen.

According to the newspaper, she offered a “heartfelt apology on behalf of her indigenous group for its much regretted role in crushing slave uprisings in Jamaica dating back almost three centuries”.

Until I read it I was blissfully unaware that such a black queen existed. We know, of course, about the other queen, the white one heading the British monarchy dating back as long as white royalty and big merchants gazed in at parts of the African continent and saw their economic salvation in the merciless flaying of black skin.

Now I know that the sweet old lady occupying the white establishment/the monarchy in England would like black-skinned folk in a place like Jamaica to believe that her relatives way back then were more British than brutish. And no one representing the place where she sits is about to upset the collective conscience of the British people and the monarchy by saying, “We are terribly sorry. It was a crime against humanity.”

That cannot be done because the legal minds here at home would immediately see the invitation to seek much more than an apology.

Will the black Maroon queen pay?

On the assumption that the newspaper report gave us its rendition of a belated April Fool’s joke, I am anxiously awaiting the next words from the Maroon queen. Plus, we need to know if all the Maroon chiefs are supportive of this coup of sorts.

Are Accompong and the Eastern-based sect on board? Like the rest of Jamaica, the present-day Maroons in Jamaica have never really been big on unity.

Just ask Chief Currie.

Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.