Jamaica Gleaner Online
Clarke calls for change in import procedures
Published: Thursday April 30, 2009
Clarke
ROGER CLARKE, the opposition spokesman on agriculture, wants the procedure by which certain agricultural imports are valued at Customs to be changed in order to protect local farmers.
Clarke has suggested that Customs be responsible for valuing select agricultural items being imported.
"Just like how you bring in a used car, whatever you tell them (Customs) that you pay for it, Customs tell you how much it worth and you charge on that," Clarke suggested during his contribution to the Budget Debate in Parliament yesterday.
According to Clarke, if local farmers are to survive, Government must find ways to prevent dumping on the local market. He said the ministry must think about applying allowable duty under the fair competition convention.
"When you bring in third-hand goods from abroad and say that you paid one cent per pound (Customs should) tell them that is your business (and price the goods based on local prices)," Clarke said.
As minister, Clarke had introduced a duty of 260 per cent on cabbage, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes and chicken.
However, he said even with this mechanism the imported food still continued to end up in the market-place cheaper than local produce as the items were undervalued by the importers.
"The reason it did not work, Prime Minister, was that when they came with the invoice, the invoices were like for nothing ... The intention was to make sure that our farmers had that competitive advantage. It did not happen," Clarke said.
Resonance
Meanwhile, Clarke's suggestion has found resonance with Agriculture Minister Dr Christopher Tufton, who shouted from the government benches, "I support you 100 per cent."
The Budget Debate continues today with Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller due to speak. Like her fellow opposition members, Dr Omar Davies and Clarke, who chided the Government's $555.7-billion Budget, she is expected to speak to the implications of Government's tax policies on the country's most vulnerable. Copyright Jamaica-Gleaner.com http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090430/lead/lead7.html
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
JAMAICA SOLUTION - HIGH COURT Judge Martin Gayle 'Plea-bargaining may ease backlog of cases'
Published: Sunday April 19, 2009
Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter
Justice Gayle
HIGH COURT Judge Martin Gayle has made a special appeal for the speedy implementation of case management and plea-bargaining in criminal matters to reduce the huge backlog of cases which has been slowing down the justice system for years.
Gayle made the appeal on Wednesday after officially opening the Easter session of the Home Circuit Court on King Street, downtown Kingston, and was informed that there were 385 cases on the trial list and that most had been traversed from previous court sessions.
Jeremy Taylor, acting deputy director of public prosecutions, called for amendment to the Jury Act so that majority verdicts could be taken in non-capital murder cases. He also expressed concern about the large number of murder and sexual-offence cases on the court list.
Ministry of Justice officials reported in January that regulations accompanying the Criminal Justice (Plea Negotiations and Agreements) Act 2005 were being finalised for tabling in Parliament. This new law would give the director of public prosecutions statutory authority to engage in discussions and make bargains with accused persons in certain felony cases. It would also allow the accused to know beforehand that their sentences would be reduced.
Many challenges
Gayle, in commenting on the backlog of cases, said, "The continued fallout from the global economic crisis has brought many challenges and the judicial system has not been spared." He said the ever-growing criminal list was a clear indication of "the challenges ahead of us". He added that plea-bargaining and case management would significantly reduce the backlog of cases and save judicial time.
Referring to the issues of widespread economic hardship, Gayle said, "It is particularly worth remembering that compassion and forbearance in the exercise of legal rights will not only assist the less fortunate to meet their daily needs in the short term, but in the longer term, will almost certainly make good social sense."
Bargaining worked elsewhere
George Soutar, president of the Advocates' Association of Jamaica, says there is no reason that plea-bargaining would not work for Jamaica, which has a tremendous backlog of cases. Experience in other countries showed that plea-bargaining assisted the process of reducing the backlog of cases, he said.
Taylor, in giving a breakdown of the cases, said perhaps the system of justice had not kept pace with the growth in crime. He called for amendment to the Jury Act so that majority verdicts could be given in non-capital murder cases. He pointed out that there were 17 murder cases on the list for retrials because juries had not arrived at unanimous verdicts.
Taylor also called on defence lawyers to advise accused persons to plead guilty in circumstances where the cases against them were overwhelming, as, in such cases, the court could give "a discount" in sentencing.
Perhaps the four criminal courts at the Home Circuit Court were not enough to deal with the number of cases, he said, as a court could only try one case at a time.
Taylor pledged the whole-hearted effort of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to ensure that as many cases as possible would be tried during the current Easter term, which ends on July 31.
Of the 385 cases on the trial list, 203 are murder cases and 139 are sexual-offence cases. The Hilary term, which began on January 7 and ended on April 3, had 407 cases for trial. Of that number 59 cases were disposed of and 348 cases traversed to the current term. A total of 37 new cases have been added to the traversed list.
Formidable trial list
Gayle described the trial list as formidable and said emphasis must be placed on clearing the backlog, so there must be fewer adjournments in cases set for trial. Disclosing that major dents had been made in the backlog of cases in the Gun Court, Gayle said he was positive that the trend would continue this term.
Attorney-at-law Paul Beswick pledged support on behalf of the private Bar, and agreed that from the figures given, there was a daunting task ahead. He hoped that the cases would move with expediency.
HIGH COURT Judge Martin Gayle has made a special appeal for the speedy implementation of case management and plea-bargaining in criminal matters to reduce the huge backlog of cases which has been slowing down the justice system for years.
Gayle made the appeal on Wednesday after officially opening the Easter session of the Home Circuit Court on King Street, downtown Kingston, and was informed that there were 385 cases on the trial list and that most had been traversed from previous court sessions.
Jeremy Taylor, acting deputy director of public prosecutions, called for amendment to the Jury Act so that majority verdicts could be taken in non-capital murder cases. He also expressed concern about the large number of murder and sexual-offence cases on the court list.
Ministry of Justice officials reported in January that regulations accompanying the Criminal Justice (Plea Negotiations and Agreements) Act 2005 were being finalised for tabling in Parliament. This new law would give the director of public prosecutions statutory authority to engage in discussions and make bargains with accused persons in certain felony cases. It would also allow the accused to know beforehand that their sentences would be reduced.
Many challenges
Gayle, in commenting on the backlog of cases, said, "The continued fallout from the global economic crisis has brought many challenges and the judicial system has not been spared." He said the ever-growing criminal list was a clear indication of "the challenges ahead of us". He added that plea-bargaining and case management would significantly reduce the backlog of cases and save judicial time.
Referring to the issues of widespread economic hardship, Gayle said, "It is particularly worth remembering that compassion and forbearance in the exercise of legal rights will not only assist the less fortunate to meet their daily needs in the short term, but in the longer term, will almost certainly make good social sense."
Bargaining worked elsewhere
George Soutar, president of the Advocates' Association of Jamaica, says there is no reason that plea-bargaining would not work for Jamaica, which has a tremendous backlog of cases. Experience in other countries showed that plea-bargaining assisted the process of reducing the backlog of cases, he said.
Taylor, in giving a breakdown of the cases, said perhaps the system of justice had not kept pace with the growth in crime. He called for amendment to the Jury Act so that majority verdicts could be given in non-capital murder cases. He pointed out that there were 17 murder cases on the list for retrials because juries had not arrived at unanimous verdicts.
Taylor also called on defence lawyers to advise accused persons to plead guilty in circumstances where the cases against them were overwhelming, as, in such cases, the court could give "a discount" in sentencing.
Perhaps the four criminal courts at the Home Circuit Court were not enough to deal with the number of cases, he said, as a court could only try one case at a time.
Taylor pledged the whole-hearted effort of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to ensure that as many cases as possible would be tried during the current Easter term, which ends on July 31.
Of the 385 cases on the trial list, 203 are murder cases and 139 are sexual-offence cases. The Hilary term, which began on January 7 and ended on April 3, had 407 cases for trial. Of that number 59 cases were disposed of and 348 cases traversed to the current term. A total of 37 new cases have been added to the traversed list.
Formidable trial list
Gayle described the trial list as formidable and said emphasis must be placed on clearing the backlog, so there must be fewer adjournments in cases set for trial. Disclosing that major dents had been made in the backlog of cases in the Gun Court, Gayle said he was positive that the trend would continue this term.
Attorney-at-law Paul Beswick pledged support on behalf of the private Bar, and agreed that from the figures given, there was a daunting task ahead. He hoped that the cases would move with expediency.
Friday, April 17, 2009
SOLUTION- COOPERATION -John White, Social Development Commission parish manager for St James, has called for a multisectoral approach for youth
SDC parish manager calls for combined effort to save youths
Published: Friday April 17, 2009
Claudia Gardner, Gleaner Writer
Published: Friday April 17, 2009
Claudia Gardner, Gleaner Writer
White
WESTERN BUREAU:
John White, Social Development Commission parish manager for St James, has called for a multisectoral approach to youth development in order to successfully manage and curtail the problem of youth delinquency.
White made his comments during a Gleaner Editors' Forum held in Montego Bay, St James, on Wednesday.
He said it was crucial that state-owned youth-oriented entities such as the National Youth Service, the National Centre for Youth Development and others, including his, which have overlapping functions, make efforts to collaborate with each other instead of undertaking solo activities.
"I think collectively we need to come together to find ways of dealing with the problem of young people, and that is why sometimes the young persons will turn to linking with the dons because this is where they find something happening for them," said White.
"And, if we don't come together and try to deal with that, we are going to have a serious problem; we are not going to able to capture and regain the trust and confidence of the young people."
White said that in some cases youths were disillusioned and needed to be channelled into positive activities, but that this could only be accomplished by an inter-agency approach.
"I know each of the agencies has their mandate, but we need to look at what each is going to do for our young people, and we can't wait on directives from our head offices," White said.
"We need to start looking at it now from the local level and how we go about doing some interventions."
He added: "We need to channel them (youth) back into culture, into drama. We need to be working together. We can't be blowing our own trumpets."
White said that, at present, the approach to youth empowerment was disjointed because "everyone is doing their own thing".
claudia.gardner@gleanerjm.com
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090417/lead/lead5.html
Saturday, April 11, 2009
SOLUTION - New legislation coming to crack down on paedophiles
Attack on child porn - New legislation coming to crack down on paedophiles
Published: Saturday April 11, 2009
Arthur Hall, Senior Staff Reporter
The Government is getting tough on paedophiles with new laws aimed at cracking down on child pornography.
The Cabinet has approved a bill titled 'The Child Pornography (Prevention) Act 2009', which is to be debated by Parliament shortly.
"There is no law in Jamaica that deals specifically with child pornography and the trend globally is to treat child pornography as a separate crime," Attorney General and Minister of Justice Dorothy Lightbourne announced recently.
"The bill will criminalise the production, possession, importation, export and distribution of child pornography," Lightbourne added.
She noted that though 16 was the age of sexual consent, for the bill, a child would be described as anyone under 18 years old.
According to Lightbourne, when the bill is passed later this year Jamaica will have its first definition of child pornography.
"It encompasses any visual representation of a child or any person depicted as a child engaged in real or stimulated sexual activity, any representation in picture or words for sexual purpose showing the sexual organs of a child," Lightbourne said.
She pointed out that any representation of a child being subject to torture, beatings or physical abuse would also be punishable under the bill, even if it is not in a sexual context.
"Also covered by the bill is just accessing child pornography. So going on the Internet and coming up on it accidentally you will be protected if you take steps to do something about it. So persons are caught if you are surfing the Internet and you come up on it and you don't report it," warned Lightbourne.
Major problem
Child pornography has been a major problem worldwide, with its reproduction and dissemination changing radically since the introduction of the Internet and cellular phones with recording devices.
In Jamaica, several cases have surfaced recently of video recordings on cellular phones. Perhaps the most infamous was the seeming attack on a teenage girl by a group of boys in a vehicle being driven by a then church deacon.
That case is still before the courts.
It was estimated that in 2003, 20 per cent of all pornography traded over the Internet was child pornography, and that since 1997 the number of child pornography images available on the Internet had increased by 1,500 per cent.
In 2007, the British-based Internet Watch Foundation reported that child pornography on the Internet was becoming more brutal and graphic, and the number of images depicting violent abuse had risen fourfold since 2003.
About 80 per cent of the children in the abusive images on the Internet are female, and 91 per cent appear to be children under the age of 12.
It has been estimated that there are between 50,000 and 100,000 paedophiles involved in organised pornography rings around the world, and that one-third of these operate from the United States.
arthur.hall@gleanerjm.com http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090411/lead/lead5.html
Published: Saturday April 11, 2009
Arthur Hall, Senior Staff Reporter
The Government is getting tough on paedophiles with new laws aimed at cracking down on child pornography.
The Cabinet has approved a bill titled 'The Child Pornography (Prevention) Act 2009', which is to be debated by Parliament shortly.
"There is no law in Jamaica that deals specifically with child pornography and the trend globally is to treat child pornography as a separate crime," Attorney General and Minister of Justice Dorothy Lightbourne announced recently.
"The bill will criminalise the production, possession, importation, export and distribution of child pornography," Lightbourne added.
She noted that though 16 was the age of sexual consent, for the bill, a child would be described as anyone under 18 years old.
According to Lightbourne, when the bill is passed later this year Jamaica will have its first definition of child pornography.
"It encompasses any visual representation of a child or any person depicted as a child engaged in real or stimulated sexual activity, any representation in picture or words for sexual purpose showing the sexual organs of a child," Lightbourne said.
She pointed out that any representation of a child being subject to torture, beatings or physical abuse would also be punishable under the bill, even if it is not in a sexual context.
"Also covered by the bill is just accessing child pornography. So going on the Internet and coming up on it accidentally you will be protected if you take steps to do something about it. So persons are caught if you are surfing the Internet and you come up on it and you don't report it," warned Lightbourne.
Major problem
Child pornography has been a major problem worldwide, with its reproduction and dissemination changing radically since the introduction of the Internet and cellular phones with recording devices.
In Jamaica, several cases have surfaced recently of video recordings on cellular phones. Perhaps the most infamous was the seeming attack on a teenage girl by a group of boys in a vehicle being driven by a then church deacon.
That case is still before the courts.
It was estimated that in 2003, 20 per cent of all pornography traded over the Internet was child pornography, and that since 1997 the number of child pornography images available on the Internet had increased by 1,500 per cent.
In 2007, the British-based Internet Watch Foundation reported that child pornography on the Internet was becoming more brutal and graphic, and the number of images depicting violent abuse had risen fourfold since 2003.
About 80 per cent of the children in the abusive images on the Internet are female, and 91 per cent appear to be children under the age of 12.
It has been estimated that there are between 50,000 and 100,000 paedophiles involved in organised pornography rings around the world, and that one-third of these operate from the United States.
arthur.hall@gleanerjm.com http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090411/lead/lead5.html
Monday, April 6, 2009
SOLUTION - Patricia Isaacs - Female farmer
Building Bridges - Former restaurateur creates niche market
Published: Sunday April 5, 2009
Photo by Gareth ManningPatricia Isaacs reaps Scotch bonnet peppers from her farm in Claremont, St Ann.
The Sunday Gleaner begins a new series today looking at innovations in farming. Many small farmers have overcome many hurdles to achieve success, and we will tell their stories.
Gareth Manning, Sunday Gleaner Writer
'REUSE', 'RECYCLE', 'reduce' are pet words that Patricia Isaacs employs on her 300-plus acres farm in the cool valley of Claremont, St Ann.
The only producer of baby corn in Jamaica, Isaacs, a former restaurateur, has created a niche market for herself, supplying hotels and restaurants.
And that has not been her only innovation.
The assertive business woman is the sole female farmer highlighted in a Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute publication recently for her farm's innovative move to develop a hydroponics system for growing crops. It's a system which utilises a nutrient solution rather than soil for cultivation.
However, shortly after Isaacs started, the operating system became challenging for the first-time farmer. But, like a good business woman, when one system fails, she simply tries another.
"Since I have fish (which is her main produce), I am going to do 'aquaponics', which is when you use the water from the fish pond to grow crops," Isaacs proudly tells The Sunday Gleaner.
The process
How will this work? By channelling water from the ponds into troughs about a 100 feet long and about six feet wide. Seedlings will be placed on foam to germinate and then transferred to troughs for growth.
"Through the foam, the seedlings absorb the water. You don't waste a lot of water because what happens is the water comes from the fish straight into the trough. It circulates the plants, takes up the nutrients and it goes back to the fish, and the fish gain from the plants, and plants gain, from the fish," Isaacs explains.
It's a win-win situation in many respects - the farmer saves water and the fish and the crops gain from the added nutrients that circulate from the pond to the trough.
And to make the system even more economical, Isaacs will be using rain water, which she already harvests for her pond.
The system won't be too expensive to set up because she already has the fish. It costs, at most, about $200,000 to build 10 troughs, but it will need a lot of attention.
"What you have to do is build the troughs with some cement and steel and you are going to need pipes," she says.
Throw in a full solar-energy unit and you have a farm working at even greater efficiency.
Isaacs' farm is fully solar generated. It's not a cheap system to buy, she explains, but it's worth the benefits in the long run.
"We have solar and if we don't have enough sun we have a back-up generator," she says.
Isaacs believes if small farmers had more access to funding and grants to invest in more efficient forms of production, like she is doing, there would be no boundaries to the amount of food the island's agricultural sector could produce for local consumption and export.
"It's very expensive to maintain. I can't stress enough that we need more access to grants if we are going to be efficient," she tells The Sunday Gleaner.
"And the farmers need to know that these grants are available. Sometimes we don't know about them and people who are friends of friends know about these things. People who want to move the industry ahead, they should have opportunities to get some of these grants," she adds.
Explaining further about her baby-corn production, Isaacs says it is easy to plant and within 60 days it is ready for reaping.
"When we plant, we plant four or five acres and they (the two major hotels she supplies) buy a lot," she says.
No waste
High demand means a lot of waste is produced by Isaac's crop of baby corn. But like most of her produce on the farm, the waste is not ... wasted.
Self-sufficiency is practised by this Guyanese native.
The trash from her baby corns is crushed and mixed with chicken manure and reused as fertiliser for the crop coming up.
"You can say what I run here is an environmentally friendly farm," she says. And that's for certain. Use is created for ever bit of waste.
Isaacs recently set up a piggery to use the trash generated from her vegetable garden.
"We don't allow anything to be wasted and at the same time, you earn more income," she explains.
Published: Sunday April 5, 2009
Photo by Gareth ManningPatricia Isaacs reaps Scotch bonnet peppers from her farm in Claremont, St Ann.
The Sunday Gleaner begins a new series today looking at innovations in farming. Many small farmers have overcome many hurdles to achieve success, and we will tell their stories.
Gareth Manning, Sunday Gleaner Writer
'REUSE', 'RECYCLE', 'reduce' are pet words that Patricia Isaacs employs on her 300-plus acres farm in the cool valley of Claremont, St Ann.
The only producer of baby corn in Jamaica, Isaacs, a former restaurateur, has created a niche market for herself, supplying hotels and restaurants.
And that has not been her only innovation.
The assertive business woman is the sole female farmer highlighted in a Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute publication recently for her farm's innovative move to develop a hydroponics system for growing crops. It's a system which utilises a nutrient solution rather than soil for cultivation.
However, shortly after Isaacs started, the operating system became challenging for the first-time farmer. But, like a good business woman, when one system fails, she simply tries another.
"Since I have fish (which is her main produce), I am going to do 'aquaponics', which is when you use the water from the fish pond to grow crops," Isaacs proudly tells The Sunday Gleaner.
The process
How will this work? By channelling water from the ponds into troughs about a 100 feet long and about six feet wide. Seedlings will be placed on foam to germinate and then transferred to troughs for growth.
"Through the foam, the seedlings absorb the water. You don't waste a lot of water because what happens is the water comes from the fish straight into the trough. It circulates the plants, takes up the nutrients and it goes back to the fish, and the fish gain from the plants, and plants gain, from the fish," Isaacs explains.
It's a win-win situation in many respects - the farmer saves water and the fish and the crops gain from the added nutrients that circulate from the pond to the trough.
And to make the system even more economical, Isaacs will be using rain water, which she already harvests for her pond.
The system won't be too expensive to set up because she already has the fish. It costs, at most, about $200,000 to build 10 troughs, but it will need a lot of attention.
"What you have to do is build the troughs with some cement and steel and you are going to need pipes," she says.
Throw in a full solar-energy unit and you have a farm working at even greater efficiency.
Isaacs' farm is fully solar generated. It's not a cheap system to buy, she explains, but it's worth the benefits in the long run.
"We have solar and if we don't have enough sun we have a back-up generator," she says.
Isaacs believes if small farmers had more access to funding and grants to invest in more efficient forms of production, like she is doing, there would be no boundaries to the amount of food the island's agricultural sector could produce for local consumption and export.
"It's very expensive to maintain. I can't stress enough that we need more access to grants if we are going to be efficient," she tells The Sunday Gleaner.
"And the farmers need to know that these grants are available. Sometimes we don't know about them and people who are friends of friends know about these things. People who want to move the industry ahead, they should have opportunities to get some of these grants," she adds.
Explaining further about her baby-corn production, Isaacs says it is easy to plant and within 60 days it is ready for reaping.
"When we plant, we plant four or five acres and they (the two major hotels she supplies) buy a lot," she says.
No waste
High demand means a lot of waste is produced by Isaac's crop of baby corn. But like most of her produce on the farm, the waste is not ... wasted.
Self-sufficiency is practised by this Guyanese native.
The trash from her baby corns is crushed and mixed with chicken manure and reused as fertiliser for the crop coming up.
"You can say what I run here is an environmentally friendly farm," she says. And that's for certain. Use is created for ever bit of waste.
Isaacs recently set up a piggery to use the trash generated from her vegetable garden.
"We don't allow anything to be wasted and at the same time, you earn more income," she explains.
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090405/lead/lead9.html
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