June is the beginning of the annual hurricane season, for which the best things that we can do is to pray and to be prepared.
In preparation, maybe we can fast-track the training of rivers by putting the army to work with the assistance of the National Youth Service, which is now in the custody of the Jamaica Defence Force. In the 1970s, as much as Michael Manley might have wanted to, he could not assign the National Youth Service to the management of the Jamaica Defence Force without a backlash. Indeed, the idea of a National Youth Service sent chills up the spines of the upper class. So had Michael Manley gone further and put the NYS under the charge of the National Youth Service, he would have been ‘crucified’ for using Castro-type strategies. Now the National Youth Service is under the management of the National Youth Service, ironically done by a Jamaica Labour Party Government. Thank God that good sense has now prevailed.

Some years ago there was a major flood in Clarendon caused by the construction of houses commissioned by the National Housing Trust in the natural path of a watercourse. This is another downside of garrison politics, in which housing is used to shore up constituencies with sufficient votes for the political party in power. The only way to stop this business of housing being used to construct political garrisons is a system of proportional representation.

The original reason for building houses for the poor in Jamaica was the development of family. This is why Jamaica Welfare went into self-help housing in the late 1930s, and why the Roman Catholic Church built the first housing scheme in Homestead, Bamboo, St Ann, in the 1940s. I recall this as some celebrated the centenary of the birth of former US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy this past Monday (May 29).

No one ever countered Norman Washington Manley when he stated in a 1966 broadcast that he was the one responsible for getting the funding for the West Kingston Housing Scheme (Tivoli Gardens) from President John F Kennedy in 1961. However, by the time the money was granted (after Kennedy was assassinated) the Jamaica Labour Party was in power and the rest is history.

But while it is said that the rise in violence is directly linked to the construction of so-called political garrisons, very few have looked at and commented on its impact on the environment, such as in building houses in the wrong places.

Food For the Poor houses came under attack from some Members of Parliament recently. This indicates that they do not know that the real reason for housing is to improve family life by providing homes, not to build garrisons. If some of the houses have termites then that needs to be addressed, but Food For the Poor houses are at least better than none.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/opinion/disaster-preparation-and-families_100478