By Dr. Garth A. Rattray, [email protected]

First published in the Jamaican Gleaner

A while back, my wife and I went on an excursion in Grand Cayman. We saw a curious sign, handwritten on a plastic container with a few United States dollar bills in the bottom of it.

The sign read ‘TIPS’. It was an acronym for ‘Tourist Input Prevents Starvation’. We thought that it was innovative and funny. However, now, as Jamaica continues its consumerist orgy, even though we cannot seem to find diverse and viable ways of producing and exporting, tourism – our major source of foreign exchange – is our lifeline to survival. TIPS has become a truism for Jamaica.

Sometime last year, we were dining in a shopping centre in Ocho Rios, a veritable tourist mecca. We observed a woman behaving like a raving lunatic because she felt that a worker in a shop disrespected her in some way.

Her interminable and animated ranting made the passing tourists steer clear of that large shopping centre. That ignorant ‘tegereg’ caused significant loss of income for that shopping centre and besmirched the image of our little island. She, like those who harass tourists, just don’t get how vital this industry is.

HARASSMENT FREE-FOR-ALL

It is noteworthy that, on my rare trips to the north coast, I always see beggars and touts and pimps and drug pushers interacting with tourists as they try to enjoy our island. The hustlers hang out at the bus stops and taxi stands. They cruise the streets, the beaches and even wade out into the water to peddle illegal drugs. They boldly walk right up on to the restaurants that abut the beaches and offer drugs to dining visitors, and they glower at those of us who dare to send a silent message of reprimand with looks of disdain.

Aside from crime, asinine shenanigans and bad behaviour, tourist harassment causes us to lose badly needed foreign-exchange income. A recent article on the subject by Tyrone Reid, senior staff reporter for The Gleaner, highlighted its severity. In spite of our efforts to squelch the problem, in 2010, 31 per cent, and in 2011, 29 per cent, of our approximately 3.1 million visitors complained that they were harassed.

Ostensibly, the drug pushers believe that tourists come here for the reefer and not for the beautiful beaches provided by our reefs. About half of those harassed complained that they were approached to buy illegal drugs. Public education and security initiatives have been the tools by which Jamaica has reduced tourist harassment.

Tourist interaction programme

As far as increased security is concerned, an article by Janet Silvera, senior Gleaner writer, spoke to the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s visitor security strategy. The piece explained that, since 2010, after graduation from the Police Academy, all policemen and women are exposed to one week of the Tourism Product Development Company’s Team Jamaica programme.

Additionally, the officer in charge of the Tourism Liaison Unit, Superintendent Karina Powell-Hood, revealed in the article that there was significant interaction with stakeholders in the tourist industry and high-volume deployment of police personnel in the resort areas. This strategy has achieved a crime rate of less than one per cent against tourists.

In spite of our best efforts, there will always be those who forget or selfishly chose to ignore TIPS. Instead, they do the opposite when they SPIT (stupidly poison international tourism) with their harassment and criminality.

Since the police cannot be ubiquitous, and since tourism is so vital to our survival, we need a tourist harassment hotline. It should be an easy-to-remember, three-digit number, posted in as many places as possible, so that citizens and visitors can call to report any tourist harassment that they see. That way, the police can quickly intervene and stamp out this embarrassing and counterproductive activity.

For more on this story go to:

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20130415/cleisure/cleisure2.html