NOTE-WORTHY: Scrap-metal crisis
Published:Saturday | January 9, 2010 | 12:00 AM
The constant stealing of scrap metal from public and private entities should be a national crisis. This seems not to be the case, as there appears to be no specific measures in place to apprehend and prosecute these thieves.
It would appear that there is an invisible, powerful hand behind this lucrative business. The authorities must step up to the plate as this is now a huge embarrassment.
Warren Robinson
Focus on community policing
My advice to the minister of national security and the country regarding our nation's crime problems is to focus more on community policing. We often look to the USA for many things, except its expertise on criminal tracking and monitoring.
Our failure to employ electronic monitoring and camera surveillance and electronic ticketing systems has put us at a disadvantage.
I know that the court system contributes significantly so, in essence, 'crime pays' the Government.
Keswayne Howell,
Playing politics?
To argue that the BOJ's advance of $3 billion to the Government of Jamaica amounts to the printing of money, as pontificated by Omar Davies, is, to say the least, naïve.
Any second-year student of economics can tell you that one of the fundamental and primary functions of a central bank is to act as the Government's banker - lending to it in times when revenues from taxes fall short of planned expenditures.
Either Dr Davies did not attend his economics 201 class, in which case that fact would have eluded him, and his degree would not worth the paper that it is printed on, or he is simply playing politics with the Jamaican people.
Delroy Lewis, Ontario, Canada
Tax street dance promoters
The issue of lewd and violent dancehall music assaulting the ears of people who would prefer not to hear them is a growing one, especially in our inner-city communities, where a sound box is placed on the public streets almost every night and the music is so loud that you cannot resist hearing the lewd and violent lyrics non-stop until the wee hours of the morning.
Can we put some order to this growing annoyance by enacting and enforcing a law that will allow promoters to host these events in an enclosed environment, where the contents and sounds will be heard only by those who attend these functions? Failure to comply must result in heavy taxation and/or persecution.
Rohan Perry