Jamaica's casino gaming legislation sent for signature

Jamaica's casino gaming legislation sent for signature
Published on Saturday, May 1, 2010

KINGSTON, Jamaica (JIS) -- The Bill to legislate casino gaming in Jamaica has been sent to King's House for the Governor General's signature, having been passed by both Houses of Parliament in March.

In an exclusive interview with JIS News, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service, Senator, Senator Arthur Williams outlined the next steps to be taken, including the Finance Minister's appointment date notice in the Gazette, the establishment of the Casino Gaming Commission and the crafting and implementation of appropriate regulations.

"Now that the law has been passed, the Ministerial order is imminent," he said. However, he noted, that great care has to be taken in ensuring that the contingent regulations comprehensively address the details governing the roll-out of casino gaming in Jamaica.

He said that the major challenge is to ensure that the casinos are run according to the strict rules that are set down.

"In this regard, apart from the main legislation, detailed regulations have to be promulgated," Senator Williams said.

He noted that the experience in other countries show that regulations for the operation of casinos can run into hundreds of pages. In one jurisdiction, the regulations run into 1,800 pages, because it is covers all eventualities in detail, he emphasized.

With respect to the appointment of a Chairman (Commissioner) and members of the Casino Gaming Commission, Senator Williams stated that this would follow the appointment date notice from Minister Shaw, after which the working committee which "guided the process" will be formalized into the Commission.

He urged Jamaicans not to lose sight of the economic benefits that can accrue from this landmark development, particularly during these challenging times.

"Casino gaming will expand our tourism product, increase earnings, generate employment and increase tax revenues. For instance the investment to build one 2,000 room hotel is some US$1.5 billion," Senator Williams said.

According to the "Memorandum of Objects and Reasons" of the Casino Act 2010, the policy governing casino gaming in Jamaica will be done within the context of luxury integrated resort developments, of which casino gaming will be but one component. The integrated resort development concept will provide a mix of various tourism facilities, including but not limited to hotels, villas, and attractions, sporting facilities, service centres and shopping centres, the Bill pointed out.

It also states that the casino gaming component should be no more than twenty per cent of the total investment, in any approved integrated resort development.

With respect to the establishment of the Casino Gaming Commission, the legislation provides regulatory functions to that body governing the conduct of casino gaming. The Commission will have powers to grant casino gaming licences to persons to undertake casino gaming within an approved integrated resort development, as well as personal licences for specific individuals identified by the Commission as occupying management positions or carrying out operational functions in a casino.

The Commission will also be empowered to ensure that casino gaming is conducted fairly, legally and in a manner which protects children and vulnerable persons.

To facilitate the Commission's functions, Mr. Shaw is seeking to amend the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1975, under which the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Commission currently regulates and controls the operations of betting and gaming and the conduct of lotteries in Jamaica.

Senator Williams explained that this was being done to ensure that Casino Gaming in Jamaica is supervised and regulated by a dedicated and focused body, the Casino Gaming Commission.

Meanwhile, a recent study, undertaken by the Finance Ministry, to estimate some of the potential impact that gaming activity would have on the Jamaican economy indicated that, in general, the activity would have a positive impact:

Casino projects are expected to generate, in total, some 33,332 jobs (8,333 direct jobs and 24,999 indirect).

Casinos have a wage component of J$0.30. That is, from every dollar of revenue earned, 30 cents is expected to be paid out as wages across all sectors of the economy.

Of the total wage bill generated by its activities, directly and indirectly, the gaming sub-sector will be directly responsible for some 40 per cent of all wages.

'Manufacturing', 'Agriculture and Meat', will experience higher wage expenditure because of their links with tourism.

For every one dollar ($1) of expenditure on casino gaming, some $2.05 in output, directly and indirectly, will be generated throughout the economy.

Apart from tourism, the main beneficiaries of casino gaming will be 'Manufacturing', 'Agriculture and Meats', 'Distribution', and 'Transport, Storage and Communication'.

Gaming is expected to account for 51.23 per cent of the increase in competitive imports (external purchase of goods and services that are produced locally).

The gaming sub-sector is expected to account for 32.29 per cent of the increase in non-competitive imports.

For every one dollar (J$1) spent within the casino sector, 34 cents (J$0.34) will be spent on the importation of goods and services. Of this amount, 0.25 and 0.09 cents of every dollar will go towards the importation of competitive and non-competitive goods and services, respectively.

The State Minister emphasized that because of the potential impact of casino gaming only serious investors are being targeted, and there is a price to pay by those who fail to honour their commitments.

"The Casino Gaming Act 2010 provides for penalties, ranging from $50,000 for failing to deliver a licence that has lapsed or ceases to be effective, to $50 million for removing seals, or devices of like nature, from the gaming machines," he said.

Quick off the mark, in response to the news of the passage of the long awaited legislation, Harmony Cove advised JIS News that the company will indeed be applying for a license under the new Casino Gaming Act.

Speaking with JIS News, Managing Director of the Tavistock Group, Christopher Anand, congratulated the Government on the new development.

"We believe the passing of the casino law begins a new chapter in Jamaican tourism development which will help to stimulate the economy for decades to come. Today, more than ever, we are committed to bringing an exciting and magnetic destination resort to the country at Harmony Cove."

Local spokesperson for the Tavistock investors, Lorna Simmonds added, "Harmonisation Limited, which represents the Government in the Joint Venture arrangement with Tavistock Group, welcomed the passage of the Act. The announcement with the offering of the full suite of casino games has made way for an expansion of our original Master Plan for Harmony Cove.

The facility will now be expanded from about 2,500 rooms, to a facility which over phases will include about 8,000 hotel rooms.

Having read the Act, Simmonds said that Harmony Cove Development will satisfy and substantially exceed the criteria set out in the Act and that the company expects to proceed with the project as soon as possible.

"Harmonisation Limited has not yet got a firm confirmation on the timetable for the Casino Gaming Commission and related facilitatory matters, but we expect that things will be place in the very near future, and our application will be submitted at the earliest opportunity," she said.

The Harmony Cove project is located just outside of Duncans, Trelawny, and will be an upscale resort development with a wide range of amenities.

Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
caribbeannetnews.com

Bent, Not Broken

April 30, 2010
Bent, Not Broken
By KASSIE BRACKEN and ERIK OLSEN
THE young teacher knows every bump and pothole along the 10-minute ride to school. The entrance to the Bruckner Expressway is the worst. “Watch this one coming up,” she calls out to the Access-a-Ride driver.

The morning has gotten off to a bad start. Her new home health aide had forgotten to put in her hoop earrings and nose ring.

The van drops her at the Urban Assembly Academy of Civic Engagement at 7:28 a.m., an hour before most of her colleagues. The handicapped-accessible entrance ramp leads to still-locked doors. She dials the teacher who comes down each morning to let her in.

Then the security guard delivers the news: “Elevator’s broken. They have to call out for a repair.”

She wheels over to see for herself. On the pea-green elevator door, blue highlighter on loose leaf: “Out of Order.”

In an instant, her day has gone from bad to much, much worse.

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/04/30/nyregion/1247467746198/a-life-of-determination-and-dependence.html

Dayniah Manderson, 30, an immigrant from Jamaica, cannot walk or bathe herself. Since she needs help going to the bathroom, she skips breakfast and does not drink anything during the school day.

For Ms. Manderson, New York has been a city of opportunity, the place where she received cutting-edge surgery and a master’s degree, where she landed a teaching job at a new middle school in the southeast Bronx and is raising a 4-year-old daughter. It is also a vertical city where elevators do not always work, a city of often impenetrable subways, nightclubs and stores.



When Ms. Manderson’s $35,000 motorized wheelchair rolls over aging blacktop and concrete, she feels every bump and crack in her bones; each sidewalk seam and tree root jolts a nerve. From the time she wakes up until the hour she is lifted into bed, each moment can be a reminder of what does not fit — a spirit that does not fit a body, a body that does not fit a wheelchair, a wheelchair that does not fit a world.

“I couldn’t live a day inside her body,” said Dr. Roberta Shapiro, who counseled her through a teenage abortion, helped secure her lifesaving surgery and has become a close friend.

But Ms. Manderson manages to arrive at work on time, get her hair done every other week and shop regularly at Victoria’s Secret — as long as everything around her works exactly as it should. It is an exhausting negotiation, a mountain of minuscule achievements punctuated by bouts of depression; a fiercely independent streak at odds with an inescapable vulnerability.

She smokes four Newports a day, out of sight of her students (and her mother). She gets annoyed with her home aides, especially, she said, “when they’re just in it for the money.” She has spent the past six years in a fractious, sometimes violent marriage to a man currently behind bars, the authorities said, on charges of sexually assaulting her. But Ms. Manderson has learned to swallow when she has a sharp opinion about a stranger. “I might,” she said, “need to ask them for help at some point.”



Since she cannot make it to her third-floor classroom, her sixth graders have been brought to an empty music room. The haphazard seating and the piano in the corner distract from the task at hand: identifying sentence types.

Finally, Frank Moreno, 11, asks, “Why aren’t we in our regular room?”

“The elevator is broken,” she says, “and my wheelchair cannot go up stairs.”


“Why can’t someone carry you?”

She smiles. “How much do you think I weigh?”

Frank considers. “Seventy pounds?”

More like 140, but the chair adds 298.5 more. The joystick-controlled panel near her right hand is her lifeline, and on this morning it allowed her to circle among fidgeting students.

She was not even supposed to be there. She was supposed to be dead by now.

•

As a 2-year-old in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Dayniah clung to her mother, Millie Williams, when she was encouraged to walk. Doctors at a clinic in Kingston gave her a diagnosis of muscular dystrophy. Ms. Williams said one told her to “prepare a coffin.”

The recommendation was institutionalization. But after two years of seeing Dayniah diminish, Ms. Williams brought her home, determined that she should live as normal a life as possible. “My mother never emphasized my disability,” Ms. Manderson said. “She had the same expectation as if I was an ambulatory child.”

This was a challenge in Jamaica. Ms. Manderson remembers doing well in school and having many friends. She does not remember seeing one elevator.

After a local doctor offered to treat her “evil spirits,” they moved to the United States in 1995.

Specialists said Dayniah had spinal muscular atrophy Type II, a degenerative neural disease that occurs in 1 in every 6,000 children. It is caused by a genetic defect that impedes the creation of proteins needed by motor neurons. Motor control diminishes, muscles weaken and, eventually, movement ceases. Those with S.M.A. Type I, the most severe, usually do not live beyond age 2. The prognosis for Type II varies widely. But when Dayniah was doing research for a school paper on the disease, her heart sank: The encyclopedia said those who had it rarely lived beyond 30.

Most spines look like 6 o’clock — straight up and down; by the time she was 14, hers had folded to 5:40, a 111-degree angle. She could not hold herself upright in her chair. The more bent she became, the harder it was to breathe, as her ribs pressed down on her lungs.

She and her mother went to Jacobi Medical Center to be qualified for home-attendant services. Dr. Shapiro, who was in pediatric rehabilitation, noticed her in the waiting room: so pretty, so disfigured. Dayniah was not her patient, but Dr. Shapiro could not help herself. “I don’t know why it was, because normally we’re trying to duck work,” Dr. Shapiro recalled. “But I just looked at them and said, ‘You come here.’ ”

Thus began a 15-year friendship. Dr. Shapiro, now 49, became Dayniah’s confidante, helping her through the difficult decision to have an abortion at 16.

“She was a beautiful teenager totally disabled in a wheelchair growing up in the projects in the Bronx and wanting to feel as normal as possible — part of that was feeling her sexuality, and she wasn’t very safe,” Dr. Shapiro said. “She began confiding in me about her feelings and her thoughts, her fears and her desires not to live any longer at times, and her depression and her joys.”

Dayniah excelled at Theodore Roosevelt High School, near the Botanical Garden in the Bronx, graduating sixth out of about 400 students in the class of 1999. At New York University, she majored in English education, lived in the dormitories — with an overnight aide — and worked in a campus office. She earned a master’s at N.Y.U. and hopes to someday become a principal.

While visiting family in Jamaica in 2001, she met Ghandi Brandt Jackson, a married man who flirted with her from behind a meat counter. A year later, he called to say he was divorced; they married in 2004 in a City Hall ceremony that was followed by lunch at an Olive Garden. Against medical advice — including Dr. Shapiro’s — she gave birth in November 2005. It was a healthy baby girl. They named her Akasha, a Sanskrit word Ms. Manderson said represents the fifth element, which nourishes the other four.

Ms. Manderson had grown accustomed to people’s saying she could not do what she wanted, and had learned to ignore the not-so-subtle admonitions that perhaps her ambitions were too big, given her disability. At a job fair, a principal warned her that the students might “throw her down the stairs.” But another offered her a job.

Being a teacher, of course, did not stop the disease’s progress. Breathing became something she had to work to do rather than an involuntary act. “I was waking up with pain, going to sleep with pain,” Ms. Manderson recalled. “I’d cry every other day in the shower.”

She knew time was running out, and was horrified at the thought of what would happen to Akasha. Dr. Shapiro said she thought she was a year away from having her spine collapse and began searching for surgeons. “No one would take her,” Dr. Shapiro said. “It’s very common because most people think, ‘Why bother? She’s going to die soon anyway.’ ”

Then, while watching the Discovery Channel, Dr. Shapiro learned about Dr. Oheneba Boachie-Adjei, an orthopedic surgeon who specialized in correcting severe spinal deformities. She called him and described her friend’s condition. He agreed to take the case.

•

A free period between classes. She should be prepping or working on student progress reports, but her materials are two flights up in her classroom. So she wheels over to the auditorium, where about 30 disabled students, also stymied by the broken elevator, are improvising a gym class.

Frank comes in from dance class, very upset. They are playing, he says, “Barbie girl songs and ballerina music” instead of Michael Jackson. She explains, in an even voice, that it would be very difficult for the teacher to play songs that every student wanted in the short class time. Frank absorbs the logic, and goes back to dance.

•

Dr. Boachie-Adjei, 59, has a deep voice that brims with a comforting confidence. Born in Ghana and educated at Columbia University, he practices at the Hospital for Special Surgery on the Upper East Side. Most years, he returns to West Africa and performs at least a dozen spinal surgeries at no charge.

By 2007, he had done the four-hour operation that Ms. Manderson needed 35 times before, but, he said, “it is always risky.” The spine is exposed and untwisted. Steel bars are affixed to the vertebrae and anchored to the pelvis.

A patient under heavy sedation can experience pulmonary collapse. She could wake up to find herself on a respirator for the rest of her life — if she woke up at all.

Ms. Manderson weighed the risks and the benefits: With the pressure relieved from her lungs and internal organs, she could expect to live an additional 10 to 20 years.

Enough time to see her daughter grow into a young woman.

In the weeks before her surgery, Ms. Manderson wrote a letter for Akasha, who was then 2, to open when she grew up. “Humility is a beautiful thing,” she wrote. “See a part of yourself in others and identify with their struggles.

“I am going through this surgery only to have the opportunity to see you grow up into the dignified woman I know you’ll be,” Ms. Manderson wrote. “Without you, my life would not have had such meaning, and now that you are here, it is a life worth preserving.”

She signed it, “Mom.”

When Ms. Manderson awoke from the anesthesia on Feb. 6, 2008, she immediately knew something was different. “For the first time in my life,” she said, “I could take a deep, full breath.”

There are still significant daily challenges. She is dependent on Access-a-Ride. Not drinking during the day leads to headaches from dehydration most afternoons (which she finds preferable to a diaper or a colostomy bag). She can sleep for lengths only on her right side; her right ear is discolored from the flesh’s wearing down. Two home attendants, paid for by Medicaid, are with her everywhere but school.

“There never is a private moment; there is always someone in your space,” she said. “But the reality of the situation is that I need help, so you don’t get bitter about it; you kind of suck it up and ask for the help you need.”

The blocky chair and her disfigured spine can make strangers uncomfortable. People look away as she rolls past. Many pedicure shops in her Bronx neighborhood refuse to serve her because she cannot lift her legs. Sometimes, in the middle of a sidewalk in Manhattan, she feels invisible.

So she puts extra energy into her hair, changing her weave style twice a week: Romance, Cascade, maybe Diva. It amazes her students.

“They look at me and think, ‘Is it some kind of magic?’ ” she said.

•

In the music room, Frank cannot focus on the work sheet in front of him. The teacher encourages questions about her condition, but usually they lapse after the first week of school. The elevator malfunction has sparked Frank’s curiosity.

He asks how she puts her clothes on.

“I have someone to assist me,” she says. “And I have a really tall husband.”

•

One Friday morning in March, Ms. Manderson received a text message that scared her: “How do you want to go out?” It was from Mr. Jackson, she said. The night before, Ms. Manderson said, he had threatened her; now she was afraid he was angry enough to hurt her. She called the police and filed a report. By Tuesday, he was in jail on charges including sexual assault and aggravated harassment.

It was not the first fissure in their relationship. Before the surgery, she went so far as to draft a separation agreement, stipulating that if she died, Akasha should go to Ms. Williams rather than to Mr. Jackson. When he found out, she said, he hit her on the nose. “I’m hot-blooded as well,” she noted, “and I rammed my wheelchair against him.” She filed a restraining order, and he was arrested a few days after the surgery, but she dropped the charges.

Among the things they fight over is Mr. Jackson’s immigration status. He has been here on a work visa but has been trying to get a green card; at one point, Ms. Manderson, who is a naturalized citizen, was so angry at her husband that she withdrew his immigration paperwork. On Friday, officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that they had begun proceedings to deport Mr. Jackson, though they would not specify why.

When they were first dating, Ms. Manderson gave Mr. Jackson a two-month “trial experiment” to see if he could handle the realities of her day-to-day life. She did not tell him the specifics — that he would have to cut her steak in a restaurant and change her tampons. She had never let anyone other than family members and Dr. Shapiro get this close.

He passed the test. When his work schedule at a nursing home prevented him from helping her take her morning shower, he quit the job. “For most of the time, I don’t see the disability,” Mr. Jackson said in an interview before the recent altercation. “I just see the individual. I just see the person; that’s it.”

But Ms. Manderson said that within months of their wedding, “everything started to go downhill.”

“I am always guarded; it infuriates him,” she said. “I have insecurities about my disability, because I know that he could always see someone else.”

They have lived together; they have lived apart. They try not to argue in front of Akasha.

At 4, the girl seems to intuitively know her mother’s limits — she has never asked her to do anything she could not. But Ms. Manderson knows her strength is deteriorating. It takes longer now to wash her face. She gives herself little tests, she said, like trying to lift a book, just “to make sure I still can.”

“Theoretically, he knows it might get worse,” she said of Mr. Jackson. “But the degree and severity, I don’t trust he fully knows, because I don’t know.”

•

By noon, the elevator is still out of commission. The repair company is tied up at another school. It could be days.

Her last group of students, a combined sixth- and seventh-grade English class, filters into the music room. A girl inquires, “Why are we here?” And she explains, again.

A boy named Donovan raises his hand. “Why is there only one elevator?” She says that is how the building was constructed.

Donovan considers. “Well,” he says, “two would be good.”

“Two would be good,” the young teacher agrees.

Gay targets Bolt's 200m record

Gay targets Bolt's 200m record

BY KAYON RAYNOR Senior staff reporter raynork@jamaicaobserver.com

Friday, April 30, 2010


AMERICAN sprinter Tyson Gay, who is scheduled to run the 400 metres at tomorrow's seventh staging of the Jamaica International Invitational, is hoping to challenge Usain Bolt's 200m record of 19.19 seconds later this season.

"I hope that my 400m relates to my 200m dropping down and I think that's the key," Gay told journalists during a one-hour teleconference organised by track and field's governing body, the IAAF, yesterday. Gay is third on the all-time list of 200m runners with 19.58 achieved last season. Only Bolt and former record-holder Michael Johnson (with 19.32secs) has ever gone faster.


GAY... I hope my 400m relates to my 200m dropping down
GAY... I hope my 400m relates to my 200m dropping down 1/1

"I'm healthy and for me to open up with 44.8 by accident, because I haven't been training in spikes or done any speed work, that's just amazing, but it just shows that I go out there and run hard," added the World Champs 100m and 200m gold medallist from 2007.

Bolt lowered both his 100m and 200m world records to 9.58 and 19.19 respectively at last summer's World Championships in Berlin, a year after setting marks at 9.69 and 19.30 at the Beijing Olympics.

Tyson, who underwent groin surgery last November, indicated that he will by trying to attack the 200m record the same way Johnson did.

"I have more foot speed than Michael Johnson, but at the same time I didn't have the kind of strength, so I'm kind of trying to go the way... Johnson done it where he had strength in the 400m and went down to the 200m and dropped his time. Hopefully, following that model I'll be successful," Gay reasoned.

Johnson, who won two Olympic and four world championships 400 gold medals, established the mark of 43.18secs in 1999.

Gay, who clocked 9.71 to take silver behind Bolt in Berlin last summer, is looking forward to the head-to-head match-ups against Bolt and Asafa Powell on the IAAF Diamond League series this season.

"The last time we ran against each other was Berlin and I really think that this year is going to be exciting for the fans 'cause if they can see that race in Berlin again and again and again, I think that's what the sport really needs," he said.

"I think when we all hook up together... the world record could go down," he added.

Meanwhile, the 27-year-old American, who became the first athlete to achieve the milestone of dipping under 10secs in the 100, 20secs in the 200, and 45secs in the 400m when he clocked 44.89secs on April 17, will face a competitive field tomorrow in the 400m at the JII meet.

Gay will match strides with World 400m bronze medallist Renny Quow of Trinidad and Tobago and the Jamaican trio of Ricardo Chambers, Jermaine Gonzales and Lanceford Davis.

Paraplegic to get $21 million 16 years after cop shooting

Jamaica Gleaner Online
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Barbara Gayle, Staff Reporter

The Government is to pay $21 million with interest to Michael Llewellyn, a 40-year-old farmer from Hanover who is now a paraplegic after he was shot in the back by the police 16 years ago.

Supreme Court judge Martin Gayle made the award yesterday after he heard evidence and ruled that the police were not acting in self-defence when Llewellyn was shot in the back on December 3, 1994. Llewellyn suffered spinal cord injuries and lost 49 per cent of the whole person.

Llewellyn, who was represented by attorney-at-law Leonard Green, had sued Inspector Gladstone Grant, Sergeant Philip Smith and the attorney general.

Llewellyn said he was in Hanover on the day of the incident when the police came there. He said he was held by one of the policemen and he managed to get away and began running. He said he was shot in the back while he was running and he had no gun in his possession.

Policemen who testified for the defence said Llewellyn was wanted for housebreaking and larceny. They said Llewellyn was armed with a gun and pointed it at the police and began to run. They said Llewellyn was running and pointing the gun at the police when they fired in self-defence.

Shot while running away

Gayle, in handing down his ruling, said he found that Llewellyn was shot in the buttock while he was running away from the police. The judge said the evidence from consultant ortho-paedic surgeon Francis Lindo was that Llewellyn was shot from behind because the entry wound was to the back.

It was the judge's finding that Llewellyn was not armed with a gun when he was shot.

Gayle found the defendants liable for Llewellyn's injuries and awarded him $20 million for pain and suffering and loss of amenities. He was also awarded $500,000 for handicap on the labour market and $391,000 for special damages, which included medical expenses.

- barbara.gayle@gleanerjm.com

Air Jamaica celebrates for the last time

Air Jamaica celebrates for the last time
Published: Saturday | May 1, 2010 0 Comments and 0 Reactions
National carrier would have turned 44 today


Laura Redpath, Senior Reporter

"We planned it that way with you in mind," the 1968 advertising poster said. "That's why ... to Miami ... we leave Kingston at 6 p.m. just before sunset, after the rush and business of the day.

"In just over two marvellous jet hours via Montego Bay, you're in Miami. On your next trip to Miami, make it the best time ... AIR JAMAICA."

It was May 2, 1966, and a Gleaner article reported that Jamaica was taking its place among the "airline-operating nations of the world".

Air Jamaica started off with two routes, serving passengers travelling between the United States of America and the Caribbean island, which was carving out a tourism niche.

Three flights, one coming in from New York, and two taking off for Miami, heralded the airline's start.

With fleets from British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), now British Airways, and British West Indian Airways (BWIA), now Caribbean Airlines, Air Jamaica was able to take off in 1966.

"Gleaming blue and white plane steps marked 'Air Jamaica' were wheeled out on the ramp and over the public address system the name 'Air Jamaica' took pride of place as passengers were called for its flight."

An all-Jamaican crew that took the first 'Sunjet' plane, carrying 102 passengers, into the skies was made up of Captain Herbert Steele, Captain Michael Guilfoyle and Captain John Purchas.

The year of Jamaica's independence, 1962, brought a realisation with it, where the Jamaican Government acknowledged the growing demand for a national flag carrier. The Government also knew that Jamaica was not ready to compete in a market where other well-established airlines existed.

The BWIA and BOAC agreement with the Government was meant to give the fledgling airline the push it needed at the starting line.

The agreement was also monitored closely, as Air Jamaica waited for the right moment to leave the nest on its own. Air Jamaica made a profit in its first 18 months, and so the Government linked with Air Canada.

canadian training

The Canadian airline agreed to provide training and technical and financial assistance as it helped with the creation of a self-contained airline.

Fashion shows, Jamaican dishes served with Jamaican rum and the famous Red Stripe were the special features one could experience on the DC-8 or DC-9 planes flying to New York and Miami, respectively.

The Story of Air Jamaica, published in 1969, pointed out that Air Jamaica intended to be "a Jamaican airline for the Jamaican people".

With today marking the 44th anniversary of Air Jamaica's inaugural flight and its current transition, Jamaicans can reflect on the story of Air Jamaica, as it was told in 1969:

"It is the national airline and (Air Jamaica Limited) would like to think that the Jamaican people will travel Air Jamaica not only out of a deep sense of loyalty but because they are proud of their own and believe in the island's future."

The Jamaica Star :: News :: Church robber beheaded :: May 1, 2010

The Jamaica Star :: News :: Church robber beheaded :: May 1, 2010

Emotions run high as Air J workers tell colleagues goodbye - Breaking & Current Jamaica News - JamaicaObserver.com

Emotions run high as Air J workers tell colleagues goodbye - Breaking & Current Jamaica News - JamaicaObserver.com