Academic suggests increased productivity will improve Jamaicans' standard of living

 

 

Lecturer and multi-disciplinary researcher, Leroy Fearon, is asserting that increased productivity across all sectors will lead to improvements in the standard of living for Jamaicans.

 

Mr. Fearon has noted that the salaries of Jamaicans are increasingly struggling to keep pace with the cost of living.

 

He has called for a sophisticated national conversation on how to increase the country's capacity to produce more value at lower costs.

 

Mr. Fearon argued that simply increasing wages without addressing productivity, energy costs, transportation, housing, food production and business competitiveness can create other pressures.

 

"We cannot keep putting monies in people's pockets to solve every economic problem. What I want to see is a change in our policies. So for instance, when we think about climate resilience. Climate resilience is an economic issue. We want to see policies surrounding agriculture, we want to see policies surrounding water security, food security because even food security is an economic issue. And so that's where I want this conversation to lead us to as a nation. Yeah, we want to see better policies that will somehow lead to growth-led salary increases," he stressed.

 

He said producing more has to be a national effort.

 

"I think we have to see this as an individual responsibility. So let's say it's telecoms. Telecoms have to ensure that their fibre optic cables are up to par in keeping with their customer base. Those in food production have to ensure that they produce more or you utilise more local raw material because that's also a part of the problem. Our manufacturing industry is almost nonexistent. We're not producing enough and so we're importing a lot, and so we're using a lot of earnings to import stuff that we can grow locally," Mr. Fearon contended. 

 

"I find it a challenge when we import even chicken when everybody's auntie and uncle or grandmother raise chicken. Yes, I think we need to regularise how that is done, get more public health people involved, get more structure in place so we can regularise how we do that. But we really have to look at these things. We have to start at home," urged the academic.

 

He was a guest on TVJ's Smile Jamaica on Thursday.