The editorial published on December 1 titled 'Flexi-week for higher productivity' was very intellectual in presentation, but lacked a concise basis for implementation. Establishing laws based on suppositions never work out to the benefit of the people.
The argument is a fallacy. Working weekends will make us more proficient and profitable. Tie up all our lives into one neat bundle because we can choose our days of work. Seriously? Have you ever been in a real flexi-week environment? I can assure you that you need to wake from that diabetic dream and inject the insulin of the actual and factual. Those who set the schedules do not care one iota for what you want. They set your schedule and you must work. Christian, Muslim or a Wiccan - who wants to celebrate the full moon - none will be given the preferential treatment that you outlined.
Innate ingenuity
Change, for the seeming necessity of it and especially to mimic another's way, most often fails. What we need to tap is our innate ingenuity and our penchant for performing above expectations. Dependent countries like Jamaica are the main victims of the global financial melt-down and a flexi-week will by no means effect enough change to alter our dependent nature. Our problem is one of lack of manufacturing prowess. Natural resources are at a premium and we have developed a bad habit of always requesting handouts. We need to break the trend.
Can we work harder? Most definitely! Jamaica maintained equity and remained solvent in the past because we manufactured what the world wanted and grew what we ate. We need to get back to that.
Get rid of the wasted acres of sugar cane and implement a mass work programme that would employ a vast majority of people. Rehabilitate the land and start our own manu-facturing. Grow produce geared for export and local consumption. Establish more animal rearing farms to meet the needs of the Jamaican population.
Get investors to build our processing plants and we pay them back with interest while we manage our own system. Those are tangible and feasible ideas, and not so much the flexi-week.
I am, etc.,
PETER LOPEZ
peterlopez7@gmail.com
The Bronx
New York