Census, hurricanes and an anniversary

At least one public-policy objective has been achieved and exceeded over the 25-year life of this column. There must be others, if we search very carefully. But we are much more used to failed policies and overruns.

The column began its life on Tuesday, November 3, 1987, with 'Three million by 2000'. "The National Population Policy Goal set by the Government of Jamaica in 1983 is 'to contain the population of Jamaica to within three million by the year 2000'", the piece began.

By happy coincidence, the 2011 Population and Housing Census of Jamaica was released just ahead of the 25th anniversary of this column. The country's population, STATIN says, is 2,697,983. A year after the target date of 2000 for under three million, the 2001 census was reporting a population of 2,607,632, with nearly 400,000 to spare. In 1960, the population stood at 1,609,814. STATIN takes us back a full 100 years to 1911 when the Jamaican population was 831,383.

Behind these numbers is a big, largely untold development story which we will spend some time looking at today.

The second piece, published two days later, joined the fashion of then, and now, and announced that we are 'At the crossroads'. A nervous editor-in-chief, Dudley Stokes, who had plucked a dozen raw recruits from off the streets by public advertisement for columnists and worrying about sustainability, wanted us to deposit a couple of pieces before he would start running our columns.

My 'crossroads' views have matured significantly since then, but I have consistently held over the 25 years, as I wrote then, that: "The two major political parties which sprang out of the single labour struggle of the late 1930s, and were led by gentlemen who were blood relatives and friendly rivals, have become the major instruments of polarisation and conflict in a society which boasts a motto, 'Out of Many, One People'."

Ten months into the column, Hurricane Gilbert, a rare east-to-west hurricane with Category Three strength, ravaged the country on Monday, September 12, 1988. Sandy, a late-season Category One hurricane, blew up a storm just before the 25th anniversary of the column. She has battered Surrey, imposed limited damage on Middlesex and has left Cornwall largely unscathed. The scales of damage, deaths, suffering, recovery time and costs are vastly different, and we must keep things in perspective. This column has been dedicated to keeping things in perspective, to balance, to dispassionate analysis.

'Coping with disaster'

With a country in shambles, power out, water off, numerous roads impassable and The Daily Gleaner (as the name of the paper was until it became just The Gleaner in 1993) off the streets for a couple of days, I scribbled a piece by lamplight, 'Coping with disaster' and struggled to North Street with it. It was run five days after Gilbert on Saturday, September 17, 1988.

Prime Minister Portia Simpson went off to visit Canada amid a storm of criticism about her failure to communicate and to be seen to lead the Government. She cut short her visit to fly back to face a physical storm. She reported to Parliament 2,000 persons very temporarily housed in 140 shelters. There were tens of thousands of people in long-term shelter after Gilbert. A later column, 'Picking up the pieces' (September 22, 1988), reminds me that I visited 14 Corporate Area shelters with a team of public-health personnel from the Kingston and St Andrew Public Health Department.

While we are inundated with crossroads warnings of a looming national economic and governance disaster (and the country's problems are large and real), the census stats, and related statistics, are quietly indicating a First World standing for our country on several critical parameters. For most of the 20th century, the birth rate exceeded 30 per 1,000. The year before the National Population Policy Goal was set by Government, the birth rate stood at 30.9 (1982). Today, it is 17.4. The death rate has tumbled from 25.6 per 1,000, 1911-1921, to 7.1 in 2001-2011, a number which itself is a little above the lowest rate ever captured of 6.4 for 1991-2001. The average annual rate of population growth, 2001-2011, is 0.36.

We know that a sustained declining birth rate is usually driven by a number of critical background factors, none of which is birth-control campaigns. The critical factors are improved education, particularly for girls, and declining levels of poverty, including the economic dependence of women.

To mark the arrival of the seven-billionth person on the planet late last year, then Minister of Health Rudyard Spencer told the country: "If we look at the figures for infant mortality, for example, in 1944, it was 98.7 per 1,000 live births. This means that 10 per cent of babies born would die. Today, the infant mortality rate stands at 19 per 1,000 live births. Life expectancy at birth at that time was 52.9 years, today, it is 71.5 for males and 75 for females - an average of 73 years.

The total fertility rate now stands at 2.3, moving from as high as 5.5 in 1970, thus trending towards replacement fertility of two children per woman. The country's immunisation programme, now in excess of 90 per cent coverage, has had tremendous impact on eliminating and reducing vaccine-preventable diseases and deaths in an "environment of resource challenges", the minister said.

Primary-school enrolment is universal, and access to secondary education is near universal. Tertiary access has expanded enormously over the last 25 years.

A tell-tale sign of 'development' is the relative increase in the proportion of older persons to children in the population. The 2011 census is showing an 8.8 per cent growth in the age 65 and over segment of the population since 2001 and a nearly double, 16.20 per cent, decline in the under-15s. Between 1970 and 2011, a dramatic 10 years have been added to the median age, the age which divides the population into numerically equal parts of younger and older persons." The median was 17 in 1970; in 2011, it was 27!

Within a week of the passage of Hurricane Sandy, the restoration of roads and utilities was at or above 90 per cent. One media story emphasised the breakaway through Castleton, St Mary, near the police station and the massive pile-up of traffic it was causing in one of the most challenging and vulnerable corridors in the nation's dense road network the day after the hurricane.

By the time we passed through on the Friday afternoon, two days later, the cavity had been packed out, much of it by citizens' effort, and traffic was flowing smoothly from Stony Hill to Annotto Bay despite being reduced to only one lane in several places.

Everywhere we drove, evidence of citizens' efforts with machete and chainsaw for clearing roads was visible, reminding me of my own machete exploits after Gilbert until my unseasoned wrist gave out.

The North Coast Highway, on which we drove from Annotto Bay to Runaway Bay, stood firm. It is well drained, even in traditionally flood-prone areas. It sits on a good base and is well paved. Which only goes to show how well we can do it when we want to do it well. Public infrastructure, even in the worst-hit parishes, held up pretty well, despite the news focus on destruction. In most cases, these facilities were operational only hours after the hurricane.

The dense network of primary and secondary schools, health centres, post offices and police stations across the country (I looked out for them as we drove cross-parish in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy) is generally in better shape nowadays than they have been in years past despite the 'poverty' of the country. Secondary roads, though, are generally poorly maintained.

The folly of poor physical development when we do it badly was blatantly evident in Port Maria. The occupants of the town's Main Street were seen struggling to clear away thick gooey mud delivered by an overflowing river which road construction has restricted.

The estimates of damage from Sandy and the costs of reconstruction laid out by the prime minister in Parliament last Tuesday are rather modest compared to the costs of Ivan and Gustav - and Gilbert.

I buy the argument that declaring Portland and anywhere else hard hit by Sandy a disaster zone is overreaching when there could be a greater need later and is potentially more damaging to our tourism interests than beneficial to recovery. Despite the debt and the looming agreement with the International Monetary Fund and the absence of a disaster recovery fund, restoration is within our capacity. We've done it before; we'll do it again. And our friends will help us, as they have always done.

Most of the household damage is as a result of marginal construction in marginal places. This will remain a major headache for the Government and reflect some of the long-standing problems of land tenure, squatting, housing - and poverty. We'll see what policy progress is made in the next 25 years "to prevent persons from building in unsafe areas and to legislate enforced evacuation", as the PM announced in Parliament, post-Sandy.

Jamaica, over the last 25 years and beyond, has been chronically in 'crisis' but has demonstrated an amazing capacity to just chug along, defying the odds and surviving.

Martin Henry is a communication specialist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and medhen@gmail.com.