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News from Jamaica

Where is the once-vibrant PNP Women's Movement?

Sunday Observer news analysis

No prison bar can ever defeat /The women who will never retreat /Oh women of Jamaica /Unite, unite and fight. Excerpt from The (PNP) Womens Song

AS it is with the churches and most organised entities in Jamaica, women are the backbone of the political parties. The absence of the once-vibrant Peoples National Party Womens Movement (PNPWM) in the 2011 election campaign is palpable.

A long-standing party insider suggested that since the departure of the late Michael Manley from the political stage, the womens movement has lost its importance and has all but died under new leader, Portia Simpson Miller, who has shown little interest in the organisation.

Jennifer Edwards, the former president of the PNPWM, remains the only known name in the movement which has been reduced to issuing the occasional news release, the most recent of which was a weak protestation that a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) candidate mentioned from the platform that that party had pretty women among its candidates.

I dont believe that the persons that we are selecting to represent us ought to be selected on the basis that they are pretty women. I hope that the women who have been selected have a lot more to offer than that, she was quoted as saying. I believe it is an insult to them and their intelligence and to women, generally, for the only attributes to be flaunted on a political platform to be their external beauty. I believe that there should be a lot more that they bring to the table than that, she added.

The PNP Womens Movement reached its zenith in the ideologically intense 1970s when it was led by Beverley Anderson-Manley and had people like Maxine Henry-Wilson, Heather Robinson, Marjorie Taylor, Alethia Barker, Karlene Kirlew Robertson, and an array of other bright, articulate women, all of whom are now far removed from the movement.

Its mission statement proudly proclaimed: To mobilise, motivate and educate the members of the Movement, of the Party and of the Society to accept that they have equal rights and responsibilities in every aspect of spiritual, cultural, social, economic and political sphere of life; to encourage, foster and promote womens integration in all areas of national development; and to protect and promote the rights, equality and dignity of women.

At its peak, the PNPWM exercised awesome clout in the PNP, and was able to influence far-reaching legislation including those that decreed equal pay for women; the Maternity Leave Act, forcing employers to give pregnant women three months leave, two of them with full pay; and the Status of Children or bastard Act which abolished the concept of illegitimate children born to unwed parents.

When the United Nations launched the International Year of Women, which represented a massive breakthrough for the gentler sex, Anderson-Manley proudly led a Jamaican delegation to the UN in 1975 to receive the adulation of many Third World women leaders.

The women of the movement became critical to the success of the PNP in elections from the 1970s to the early -1990s. But with the departure of Manley, who had given full encouragement to the PNPWM, the organisation began a precipitous slide. It found its voice from time to time under PJ Patterson, but never regained its former pride of place. Under Portia Simpson Miller, the movement lost all its remaining lustre, as members complained that she sidelined those regarded as competitors. Edwards, the former Spanish Town mayor and Portia loyalist, tried valiantly to keep the movement going but to no avail.

In a complete reversal of political party history, the JLP, which had a womens group called National Organisation of Women (NOW) that never attained the heights of the PNPWM, has now fielded more women in the elections than the PNP. Its a measure of how women have lost power in the party of Norman Manley.

A HOUSE AT LAST!

Food For the Poor rescues father raising 6 kids alone despite drop in donations

BY NADINE WILSON Sunday Observer staff reporter wilsonn@jamaicaobserver.com

Sunday, December 25, 2011

PATRICK Richards and his six children spent the wee hours of Christmas morning last year trying to dodge raindrops seeping through the cracks of their makeshift house just outside of Moneague in St Ann.

But thanks to the generosity of local charity group Food For the Poor (FFP) and his neighbours, Richards and his children will be able to enjoy today in a brand new two-bedroom structure that the entity handed over to them about two weeks ago.

The difference between what was home last year and the new structure they now call home complete with living room, bathroom, kitchen and verandah has not been lost on Richards.

The living condition was extremely bad. There was no running water, so we had a few jugs that we used to catch the rainfall to do washing, cooking, and other things, he told the Sunday Observer. The house leaked, because it was like some stick that we cut and a few pieces of board and we had like some canvas around it, and we just made it a home. We really worked with it and give thanks, still.

He explained that the wooden structure was partitioned into three rooms to ensure that his four girls were separated from him and his two sons.

The 44-year-old father was left to take care of his children, ages six to 18, when he and their mother separated in 2007. He said things between them began to sour shortly after he was laid off from his job as a supervisor at North Eastern Parks and Market in 2001. He turned to farming, but this was not very profitable.

With all of that, I kept struggling. I never have a job, I had to go like at the landfills and pick up drinks bottles and stuff like that and put it together and sell and, like, have a small salary. Trust me, the money was like $300 or so. The biggest money I make was like $1,500, he said.

Richards said he would go to the landfills at 8:00 am, shortly after sending his children off to school, and return home after 1:00 pm so he could collect his youngest child from school. The rest of the day would be spent preparing meals, assisting with schoolwork and getting them ready for school the next day.

His commitment to his children did not go unnoticed, and a few of their teachers would, at times, send them home with food. A small cadre of women from the church and the community would offer advice and assistance where possible.

Earlier on this year, the Child Development Agency people heard about the situation, in that the housing never proper and the surrounding never really conducive to living, and so forth. So they took away two of the kids, a girl and a boy, he said. There were a few church people, along with the teacher, who saw the move and say, well, they really have to come on board in a more positive way and seek some help for me and the kids them.

Food For the Poor was contacted to see how it could assist. In addition to the house, the agency also gave the family groceries, clothes and furniture, thus ensuring that Richards and his children will have a merrier Christmas this year.

Richards, who is estranged from his family, said he was overwhelmed by the generosity of FFP and especially the women in his community. He is a trained mason, so he is now hoping that he can get a steady job close to home to better provide for his children in the new year. But for today, he is just planning on relaxing and tackling some chores with his offspring.

Mi and the children dem going to clean. I am kind of one of the little tidy man them still who will get up and take up broom and ting, you know, he said.

Richards is one of 1,216 persons who have been given houses by FFP since the start of the year in the organisations attempt to ensure that at least some needy families would not have to spend another Christmas in the dilapidated shelters they last year called home.

But the entity is still not satisfied, as it had hoped to hand over at least 3,000 homes this year.

Back in the days, up to a year-and-a-half ago, you could knock that off in a year or a little over a year, because we were building 300 per month. So you are doing 100 per month now and you end up with 1,200 for the year. If we were still doing our 300, we would have done 3,600 for the year, said marketing and public relations consultant for FFP Audley McCarthy.

As it turns out, the groups desire to assist more persons has been curtailed because of limited financial resources, and contributions from members of the public have slowed to a trickle. Efforts to get people to donate locally have not been very successful. McCarthy pointed to the fact that despite placing 70 marked boxes at various locations across the island, the amount contributed to these boxes in the past three years combined is less than the $250,000 it would cost to build just one of FFPs single housing units.

They (boxes) are all over the island, we have them in pharmacies, supermarkets, we have them in insurance companies, banks, we have it at the Norman Manley International Airport and we have just concretised a corporate partnership with Courts Jamaica and Singer, so we have eight boxes in each of those furniture stores as well, he said.

With not enough corporate sponsorship, the majority of the funds necessary to build the houses is sourced from North America through the FFP head office in Florida.

Essentially we need houses and we would say okay, here is John Brown down here, this is his condition, this is his before picture. Food For the Poor up there basically appeals to their donors to help them to be able to build houses. So a family might decide to donate in the honour of a dead relative, or a group of persons might come together and put on a charity event and the proceeds are given to Food For the Poor, McCarthy said.

What Food For the Poor further does is they now would send that money down in order for us to be able to build a house for John Brown, so the money comes from them and their donors, he said.

But he believes corporate entities and citizens here can assist in helping to meet the demand for housing by contributing to this endeavour. Just two weeks ago, staff from public relations agency PROCommunications was able to enrich the lives of an elderly woman and her granddaughter by allocating the budget for its traditional Christmas party to build them a house instead.

The woman, Sybil Morrison, and her granddaughter Britanya, were in dire need after the roof of their former home fell in. The PROCommunications staff, led by founder and managing director Jean Lowrie-Chin, not only handed over the $278,400 to the FFP Housing and Infrastructure manager, but also assisted with the technical details and painting of the house.

Morrison was forced to raise her granddaughter in a dilapidated structure on Mount Salus in rural St Andrew after gunmen invaded her home in Franklyn Town in 2005, killing her daughter and the childs mother. Britanya was five years old at the time.

McCarthy hopes that kindnesses such as this will become a regular occurrence in corporate Jamaica and put a dent in the growing demand for housing for families falling below the poverty line, demand he suspects will continue to grow.

Technically speaking, I can tell you that we are three years behind, if at the moment we can only build 1,200 (houses), McCarthy said. We have on our waiting list 4,000 persons plus, who are waiting on us to give them a house. They are approved and everything and are in the system [but] the funds are just not available to go out there and build.

Apart from proving a need, a person would have to own the land they would like to build on, or have a written lease before they are approved by the organisation.

People think this is too demanding, but we have seen cases where a couple are together and one of their parent say look here, you can build the house on this land with no written agreement or nothing, and then the couple breaks up. You really perhaps wanted to give it to the woman because she has six children, but when the couple breaks up and it is the boyfriends parents land, she has to take up herself and leave and you cant lift up the house, explained McCarthy.

Food For the Poor works with about seven contractors who have sacrificed over the years to ensure that the houses are put up in a relatively short time. A house can be built within four hours after a foundation has been laid. Unfortunately, McCarthy said, they have had challenges over the years in getting community members to help with the laying of the foundation.

He recalled one situation earlier this year when the organisation was challenged to get residents of a Clarendon community to help them lay the foundation for a four-bedroom house that the Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) had sponsored for a mother and her 11 children.

Nobody would help to build the foundation and when we finally put up the house because our staff members went down now with staff from BNS to build the house can I tell you that the level of animosity, the sense of jealousy was shocking. One woman I personally heard, she looked and said, but she a get house and for 20 years now me want a house and me cant get it, recounted McCarthy.

Despite the challenges, Food For the Poor continues to do what it can to help the poor and indigent. Since the start of the Yuletide season, it has feted at least 200 residents and 17 staff members at the Golden Age Home. It also hosted a treat for 17 residents at Christian Care Nursing Home which it operates in Downtown Kingston.

The organisation also recently paid the fines to secure the release of 21 inmates from various penal institutions so they could spend Christmas with their families, and on December 15, a little under 1,000 indigent persons were treated to a fun day at Emmet Park, St Georges College.

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Top 10 business stories in 2011

Sunday, December 25, 2011

As 2011 comes to a close, Sunday Finance reflects on some of the big stories that made it another landmark year for commerce in Jamaica.

Shocking acquisitions, a 'cock fight' and the death of an entrepreneurial giant are among our list of top buzzworthy business events this year.

Digicel buys Claro Jamaica America Mvil (AMX) shocked the telecoms industry in March when it announced it would sell its local Claro operations to rival Digicel Group. In return, it acquired 100 per cent of Digicel's operations in Honduras and El Salvador. The deal which was completed this month allowed Digicel to further solidify its place atop the local mobile telecommunications sector while AMX gobbled up critical market share in its Central American base. JMMB acquires Capital & Credit The local financial sector was stunned in August with news that Jamaica Money Market Brokers (JMMB) was acquiring up to 100 per cent of Capital & Credit Financial Group (CCFG). JMMB offered a 70 per cent cash payment of J$2.95 billion and the remainder by way of an issue of new ordinary shares in JMMB to the shareholders of CCFG, subject to the necessary JMMB shareholder approvals being obtained. The deal, subject to regulatory approval, means JMMB will now have 180,000 clients and assets under management on balance sheet of $160 billion. When one talks about off balance sheet, that figure is closer to $180 billion when both finance houses are combined. David Smith gets 30 years David Smith, the Jamaican who headed the collapsed investment scheme, Olint, was in August sentenced to 30 years in prison by the United States District Court in Orlando, Florida. Smith, who was accused of defrauding thousands of customers of more than US$220 million, was convicted after pleading guilty to 18 counts of money laundering, four counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. US District Judge Mary Scriven handed down the sentence after hearing three hours of legal arguments and victim testimony, which was emotional at times. American Airlines bankrupt American Airlines, which flies more passengers to and from Jamaica than any other carrier, and its parent AMR went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month seeking protection from creditors who are owed US$29.6 billion ($2.5 trillion). The company also announced that their chairman and CEO, Gerard Arpey, 53, who earned US$5.2 million last year, was retiring, to be replaced by president Thomas Horton, 49. The dramatic move came after American failed in its attempts to negotiate cost-cutting agreements with its unions. Every other major US airline went into Chapter 11 protection after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks sent the aviation industry into a tailspin. Emerging with lower debt and pension obligations, they were able to out-compete American, which claimed to have a US$800 million wage gap. NCB to list in New York National Commercial Bank (NCB) in June decided to list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) following an announcement, made a month earlier, that it would cross-list on a North American exchange. The commercial banking group aims to raise US$175 million through an initial public offering but said at the end of May that it would decide between the New York-based exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). CB reported an 18 per cent increase in net profit to $13 billion over the year ending September 30, 2011, buoyed by a $1-billion gain on investments in JMMB and Kingston Properties Limited. ICT thrust Under the guidance of Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce Dr Christopher Tufton, Jamaica saw an influx of invesments into the information communication technology (ICT) sector in 2011. Just this month, one of the largest agent-assisted customer service companies in the world, Convergys Corporation, announced that it would open its first call centre in Jamaica next year, hiring 1,000 locals. Government has set a target to facilitate the build-out of 500,000 square feet of space for the business processing industry over the next three to five years as part of its plan to more than double ICT jobs in Jamaica over that period. As part of the initiative, a US$20 million infrastructure loan facility was launched last month to support growth in the sector. The financing support is aimed at developing at least 350,000 square-feet of appropriate ICT ready space to accommodate tier one operators in the ICT sector, which is expected to generate 10,000 new jobs locally. Black Sand eyes Lascelles Former managing director of local conglomerate Lascelles d Mercado, William McConnell, staged a bold move earlier this year to acquire the company he once headed. McConnell made the move as part of the Black Sand consortium of investors, which in July announced its intention to acquire not less than 90 per cent of the ordinary shares and all of the six per cent preference shares, as well as all the 15 per cent preference shares of Lascelles deMercado. Only two years ago, McConnell and others sold their majority shares in Lascelles to CL Financial for approximately US$750 million and now, McConnell's consortium is offering US$350 million for it. Red Stripe moves production to US In a strategic move that will likely mean loss of local jobs, Red Stripe announced its plan to shift production of its beer destined for the US to North America under a licence agreement. The company said that the returns it expects from higher penetration into the US market and more focus on the domestic side of its business should put the company on a stronger footing. According to its audited financial results for the year ended June 30, 2011, revenues from export to the US represented $2.86 billion, or 25.7 per cent of total revenue and 73.6 per cent of export revenue, which was down from $3.03 billion, or 27.2 per cent of revenue and 77 per cent of exports in the prior year. Cock fight! Caribbean Broilers (CB) was forced to scrap plans to use chicken waste parts to make poultry feedstock after public pressure and jabs from main rival, Jamaica Broilers (JB). The idea came up as CB contemplated what it would ultimately do with byproducts it would process at a protein recovery plant that would make high-grade protein derived from the chicken waste parts (feathers, blood and offal comprising heads, wind pipes and intestines), described in a project brief submitted to the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA). But an article published in the Business Observer brought the proposed project to public attention not least of all, JB and within days, JB put out an ad stating that "we do not feed chicken to chicken". CB's response in its ad said: "Caribbean Broilers would like to assure you that we have never 'fed chicken to chicken' and will not be doing so". The ad went on to say that the company was researching environmentally friendly ways to dispose of unused chicken parts. CB subsequently caved in, announcing via an advertisement that "although there was a discussion regarding the use of this item in the production of chicken feed, in what is an internationally accepted practice, we have noted the response of the Jamaican public and will therefore not be considering this option". Jobs dead Steve Jobs, the Apple founder and former CEO who invented and masterfully marketed ever-sleeker gadgets that transformed everyday technology, from the personal computer to the iPod and iPhone, died in October. He was 56. Jobs had battled cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009 after taking a leave of absence for unspecified health problems. He took another leave of absence in January his third since his health problems began before resigning as CEO six weeks before his death. Demarco does it for LIME Sunday, December 25, 2011 DANCEHALL star Demarco, whose hit single I Love My Life which has gained over 10 million viewers on YouTube, is turning his love for life into a Christmas jingle for telecoms provider LIME. Replacing the word life with LIME, Demarco has remixed the 2011 smash hit creating a very catchy jingle which highlights the company's Christmas offer of a lifetime of services. I Love My Life is already featured in one of the commercials for the Christmas of a Lifetime campaign, in which LIME gifts its customers with free services for 40 years. After they overcome the surprise of winning, lucky customers spontaneously sing and dance to the chart-topping hit while receiving their prizes. This song is such a great sentiment to the celebration of life; it is about enjoyment, feeling good and living life to the fullest. Plus, it is a huge hit. That's why it is perfect for our Christmas of a Lifetime promotion because what we are giving our customers will make them feel good, eliminating some of their financial responsibilities for not one but up to 40 years. This is a historic promotion as it has never been done before by any brand anywhere in the region. We give people lots to celebrate, said Grace Silvera, Regional Vice-president, marketing and corporate communications at LIME. The Christmas of a Lifetime promotion will name 330 individual winners of Landline, Internet, Mobile and TV service for 40 years as well as five winners of all the services for the same time period.