White Elephant Economic Model

THE EDITOR, Madame:

An article entitled “Multimillion-dollar white elephant,” published in the Sunday Gleaner on August 20, 2023, by Mark Titus, solidifies my unwavering opinion that Jamaica, notwithstanding signs of so-called economic growth, is on a slippery slope of unsustainable development.

The article reports that the Montego Bay Sports Complex, a gift from the Venezuelan Government to the people of St. James 13 years ago for J$1.4 billion, is “bleeding the public purse. . . while bringing in very little revenue”. It details a litany of mismanaged and visionless woes, such as the unfit-for-use all-weather synthetic track, the absence of a management oversight committee for the complex, the resistance of the Municipal Corporation to a public-private partnership arrangement, and the incomplete investigation of illegal racing car activity on the synthetic track.

The demise of the sports complex is symptomatic of our country’s impending developmental demise. Over the years, we have invested billions of dollars into government and private sector physical infrastructural work, hotels, apartment buildings, highways, conference facilities, and health and educational facilities.  Juxtaposed with these is a catalogue of self-defeating activities and behaviour, for example, waste mismanagement leading to air and water pollution (municipal dumps, river courses and harbours).  It is an appalling and disgusting sight to see mountain-high garbage in the Sandy Gully (Kingston and St. Andrew) and the North Gully (Montego Bay), plastic bottles and garbage littering the beaches along the tourist belt, evidence of algae growth in the waters of our best beaches, poor road signages and markings on the North Coast Highway, and the non-prosecution of companies responsible for damaging our road surface with the cement from trucks transporting that commodity to multi-billion-dollar construction sites.

As a people of extravagance and flair, we bask in the immediacy of spending millions on construction and ribbon cutting. Yet, we could enjoy even greater success by better managing our investments for future returns. Our tourism investment has a similar fate to the Montego Bay Sports Complex. Despite some positive gains in tourism and the industry’s marketing strategy, it is unlikely that the tourism brand, which depends on the natural environment, will be sustainable within the context of a mismanaged environment and widespread ignorance of caring for the environment.

The poor management of the Montego Bay Sports Complex exemplifies Jamaica’s White Elephant Economic Model.  It is only a matter of time before this short-lived model will crash. Only a people-centred economic model can give birth to sustainable development, that is, development of and for people, and not for profit or poster appearance.

Fr. Donald Chambers, JP