THE EDITOR, Madam:
THE OBSCENE increases in the cost of local telephone calls granted to C&W by the Government must be met with similar per cent decreases in telephone usage by the people. It is time that Jamaicans make a determined and sustained effort to blunt the greed of such corporations.
Cutting back on the number of calls made per month should send a clear message to C&W that the people do have recourses. C&W must not be allowed to use these increases as a catalyst for satisfying its exorbitant profiteering wishes.
I am personally disappointed that the government was not 'for the people' on this occasion.
The same approach must be used in other situations where undeserved profiteering is the goal of business enterprises. The only reason why outrageous increases can be contemplated and subsequently implemented is because the ruthless business predators in our midst expect only transient resistance from consumers in the form of marches and road blocks. It is usually 'profitable' business as usual the following day until some future financial obscenity is again visited on the people.
The theory of supply and demand is necessarily applicable to the C&W issue because the government has unwittingly allowed the former to literally hold the island to ransom. In the first instance, why guarantee any company a minimum profit without having any consumer protection mechanism in place?
There are many lessons that we should have learnt since Adult Suffrage in 1944 and certainly since political Independence in 1962. The challenge therefore for the people and for the duly elected government of Jamaica, is to learn the lessons well, so that there are no future C&W bogeys to bear.
I am etc.,
WINSTON L. STEWART, P.E.
E-mail:
Messengjah@msn.com
230 Lafayette Avenue
Cortlandt Manor
New York
Via Go-Jamaica
