By admin The emergence and almost immediate adoption of the term “emancipation” by the people of Jamaica is perhaps a major indication of its organic nature and the evolutionary thinking of the nation.
This is why the recent call by the Private Sector Organization of Jamaica (PSOJ) to celebrate Emancipation Day – August 1 – and Independence Day – August 6 – on two consecutive days makes inherently common sense.
As is the case today, the holidays are spread over six days, separated by three or four working days, which means that factories and other installations that need time to shut down/start up have to choose between losing productive days or paying employees to work. overtime.
More importantly, the withdrawal of labor from key industries contributes to an already woefully low productivity rate that is later revealed in Jamaica’s booming economy, which has never been able to support nearly three million people.
The question that Jamaica has always faced is whether, in an environment of low productivity, we can afford the number of holidays we have. There is also the question of how to measure the benefits that our holidays have for the development of our country.
Although Jamaica is doing well as unemployment has dropped to 4.5 percent, there has been no commensurate increase in economic growth. According to the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI), employment increased by 13 percent between 2015 and 2023, but economic output increased by only five percent.
“When employment grows faster than output, it means that the average output of additional workers is lower than those previously employed; this means a drop in productivity,” says CAPRI.
This decline in productivity and the resulting eight percent growth gap occurred because most newly hired workers were less skilled and therefore less productive than those previously employed, CAPRI found in its report on job growth without economic growth.
Among the industries that have developed the most, construction and business process outsourcing (BPO) mainly covers activities with low added value and requires the employment of employees with increasingly fewer qualifications.
In fact, while almost all 12 major industries saw employment growth, productivity increased in only three of them simultaneously. It is worth adding that every fourth newly created job is in the BPO sector. Imagine the disaster if the bottom falls out of this sector.
In this scenario, we celebrate 10 public holidays every year: New Year; Ash Wednesday; Good Friday; Easter Monday; Labor Day; Emancipation Day; Independence Day; National Heroes Day; Christmas; and the second day of Christmas.
Labor Day, with its call to action to volunteer in the community, can be treated as a productive day, even though more and more people treat it as a day of rest and relaxation, as evidenced by the turnout at the beaches.
The importance of celebrating our Liberation and Independence does not really depend on how much time we spend frolicking, but more on the quality of the celebration. We can commemorate events while increasing productivity in one weekend. In other words, we can ride and whistle.
It’s a shame that people like our Chief Justice Bryan Sykes remain so blinded.