Friday June
7, 2013 the news broke that the Jamaican dollar reached a record high against
the United States (US) currency at average selling rate climbing to J$100.08,
according to the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) foreign-exchange trading summary.
According to
the historical exchange selling rates provided by the BOJ in a time series of
the US dollar versus the Jamaican dollar, in 1971, the US dollar was sold at an
average rate of J$0.77.
Tracking J$ over three decades
1971 - J$0.77
1980 - J$1.78
1990 - J$6.50
2000 - J$41.49
2010 - J$89.59
2011 - J$85.87
2012 - J$86.60
2013 - J$92.77
Present - J$100.08
Daily I wake
up and I’m in a very depressed state. Reason being I have never seen Jamaica achieve
positive economic growth in all my existence.
Jamaica is a
country blessed with potential but we seem to be stuck in that state. Our
leaders have failed us and we have failed ourselves. I look around me and I see
poverty, unemployment, and underemployment.
I even lack
the motivation required to blog this article.
I sit and
scratch my head daily trying to figure out how to turn this country around, bear
in mind this isn’t my job as I was not elected leader of the blessed nation.
I am proud
to be a Jamaica but I’m ashamed of where we are in our development. I believe
we are the laughing stock of CARICOM.
I am a
patriot but right now as it stands if I get a chance to leave this place then I
will take it.
We cannot
continue to fool ourselves and hide behind our successes in sports and music.
We preach tourism yet we are not doing anything different from the rest of the
Caribbean and the Americas in that sector.
We need to
think “outside the box.” No scratch that we need to “think like there is no box”.
We should become innovators of our own destiny.
The world is
at a stage in history when technology has shown its capabilities. We hear of
Solar and Wind energy. But it confuses me as to why an island located in the
tropics blessed with wind and never ending sunshine fails to invest in these
technologies on a large scale.
Also we need
to invest in Green House technology to assist our farmers and feed our nation
and stop all these imports.
I ask myself
the question…Do we really care about each other? Does our government care about
us?
We elect
them yet all we get are broken promises and in those broken promises the rest
of us sit and complain.
Are our
voices being heard? The news each day is all negative. What will we do?
Where will
we go? Who will we look to? Who will lead this country? I have lost faith in
our leaders? 51 years after Independence we have failed to live up to
expectation.
S.B. Stanberry
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