FI WI CONCERNS - Michael Spence

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