DEEP RURAL Jamaica is dying and it will need much more than Highway 2000 to revive it. Rural towns such as Troy in Trelawny, Cascade, Hanover, and others all over Jamaica have become virtual ghost towns.The shops, locked tight with paint peeling, metal grills rusting and wood rotting, are remnants of better days. Many schools are run-down, populated by children whose parents barely afford to send them to school in the towns, and teachers who either have some deep commitment to the area or who are unable to leave.
We speak here not of bustling townships such as Santa Cruz or Junction in St. Elizabeth, Falmouth in Trelawny, or Spaldings in Manchester. We refer in particular to the districts wilting with the agriculture that should sustain them; and the paucity of facilities as described by The Gleaner's March Silver Pen winner and our own Western Bureau Chief, Marjorie Stair, in her column in last Friday's Financial Gleaner. Both painted a vivid picture of dire rural neglect. As Ms. Anderson-Brown says: "To live in rural Jamaica is to be scorned!"
The encircling of the cities of Kingston, Montego Bay and major tourist resorts by squatter settlements is the direct effect of rural neglect, as are many other crippling social problems. Rural Jamaicans are forced into urban centres, and ultimately overseas, in search of a better life. No matter how desperate the new life becomes, many rural Jamaicans, especially the younger ones will not return to the darkness of rural living.
They will not return to inaccessible roads and little or no transportation. They will not return to poor schools, absence of medical services, no water, no light, no telephones, no entertainment, no opportunities for employment, no income.
The state of rural Jamaica is the direct result of poor governance, inadequate political representation. It is a clear indication that our political representatives do not understand the role they are expected to play in the development of the country.
The vast majority of the 60 Members of Parliament represent rural constituencies. They are supported by Parish Councillors, who are also rura- based. If one thing can be said about the aim of political representation of the past three or four decades it is that theory has mocked reality. By and large the politics of parliamentary representation have held the rural residents of Jamaica in contempt.
The war on poverty must vault the hedges of the highways and into the remote countryside stifled by rampant neglect.
