Passport Fiasco
The Passport
Immigration and citizenship Agency (PICA) recently announced an increase in the
price of a Jamaican Passport from$4500 to $6500 has resulted in arguments and
counter arguments from many quarters ranging from reasonable to unreasonable
and unconscionable and wicked has prompted many questions. Such as why such a steep increase for a small book the
price of which in any bookstore would not be more than $300 Jamaican dollars
while a thick Oxford Pocket Dictionary has not yet reached $2000 dollars
containing thousands of prints and also couldn’t the increase be a phased one
to eliminate the shock and awe from such increases?
PICA the distributors/sellers
of the Jamaican/ CARICOM passport would do well to answer the following
questions publicly which may well justify the pricing:
Where are
our passports manufactured and or printed, designed in part or whole local and
or overseas?
Is the Jamaican passport a most reliable
secure and trusted document that cannot be duplicated, copied hacked or cloned
whether opened or closed or is it just an unjustifiably expensive little book
with one’s name?
Is the document issued unique to that person
and what are the features that make it so for example does it have a unique
chip or chips embedded within containing one’s details that require special
keys/code to access this information and who has it?
What level
of security, responsibility is there regarding transport, storage/safekeeping
of security features?
What would
be the process for a Jamaican citizen requesting a Jamaican passport meaning
marked only Jamaica not CARICOM and would the cost of production be less than
Jamaican $6500.
Have there
been an audit and an assessment of the aims, objectives role and functions of
PICA since it has been operating.
May I
suggest that elaborative, transparent and demonstrative answers to these
questions by PICA may well be able to justify to the citizenry present
increases now being questioned by many? PICA should demonstrate why such a high
cost for this essential little Jamaican book the passport also a book of hope
and progress.28/05/15
Windsor Heights – St. Catherine
Occupiers of
1,250 lots in Windsor Heights, St Catherine, now face eviction from the
properties many of them have called home for years. The property, which is
owned by the ministry of Transport, Works and Housing, is approximately 280
acres comprising of approximately 1,500 lots. Give the people the land all of
which is crown/capture land all around to the descendants of slaves making up
the 60% squatter population. In the same way that the Chinese can get more than
1200 acres of land why Jamaicans cannot get 280 acres? Or at worst make their
payments be reasonable property taxes on the said lands for the period of
occupation. Jamaicans must not buy into the oppressive ideas that all
governments try to sell us and keep us down to the benefit of others.25/05/15
Michael
Spence
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