Letter of the Day | We need solutions to everyday issues

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I live outside the city centre and must venture into it to access services that require in-person attendance, like banking, restaurants, all government offices, including the post office.

I point this out because as I drive among Jamaica’s potholes into and around town, I pass overgrown medians looking like forest reserves, broken and cracked sidewalks, potholes in roads and open manholes in sidewalks, some featuring bodies of water, except that it is sewage in them.

Drivers perfect reaction times and pedestrians maintain fitness with hops, skips and jumps in order to move through the city. Out in Bull Bay (St Thomas) we have no public park or recreational spaces, and the new sidewalks and roads have built-in hazards, like missing drain gratings and gaps in sidewalks, to frustrate any disabled person, and many drivers.

DEPRESSED

In addition to the physical condition is the social disorder, and prevalence of criminal activities, which is enabled by the maze of chaotic streets and tenement yards behind zinc fences that have become rationalised as residential communities. There is a lot to be depressed about, and more to make people mad. But I keep hearing that we have macroeconomic stability, so we just have to adjust to the circumstances and be grateful.

In the meantime, the country is preparing for a general election and we have the attendant distraction of members of government in court trying to overturn laws they created, and pushing massive public relations campaigns. The distractions are neither helpful nor useful to my situation. I need a well-run city/country, not political drama. Government is a feature of the representation of the people of the country, and representation requires knowledge of the people’s situations and circumstances, none of which are being addressed at this time.

We are (instead) consumed with road fatalities, political dysfunction, murder and mayhem; and now, distraction by the very people who should be addressing them.

I am looking for solutions to everyday issues, and reforming the Constitution will not do it. Court challenges against the Integrity Commission will not do it, so it is to be seen if Jamaicans will be able to figure out who, and how we are to address the running of this country. But unlike some politicians who believe that they alone can do it, our participation is required–not optional–and, ironically, that’s why we elected them to work with us to get solutions done. Someone needs to tell them that they work for us, not the other way around. Our business is why they are there, not theirs.

FED UP WITH DISTRACTIONS