Jamaica Gleaner News – Sergeant surrenders – Thursday | February 21, 2008
The government must be commended for the current attempts to rid the police force of ‘corrupt cops’. I am by no means suggesting that the police sergeant in this situation is guilty of corruption, the courts will decide that, but the government is clearly making an attempt to restore dignity and respect for the police force. This will have far reaching effects if successful as citizens will be more willing to come forward with information to assist the police in their attempts to combat crime. The government will also benefit from increased revenues as some of the money being used to bribe ‘corrupt cops’ will actually end up in the government coffers as law breakers are forced to pay fines etc. to the Inland Revenue.
The government must learn to multi-task however as there is another area that needs urgent ‘housekeeping’ and that is the Customs Department. Do not be mislead by the fanfare and praises that were leveled on representatives of the Customs Department during their recent celebrations. Some undoubtedly deserve it, but for others there is a ‘dark side’ of bribery an deceit. I suspect that government may be loosing far more revenue due to ‘corrupt’ customs officers than the revenue lost due to corrupt cops. It is being said that custom officers are the new ‘extortionists’.
Importers have been forced to live with these ‘extortionists’ as they have received no help from members of the Custom Brokers Association who have become the unwilling collectors for these rogue Custom Officers. We need some whistle blowers who can assist the police in busting open this racket that has robbed the government of badly needed revenue over the years. The importers can help also as they know the people who are beneficiaries of this unwholesome tax. If this is allowed to continue, the government will face an uphill battle in combating inflation as these importers simply pass on the cost of paying the bribe to the consumers by adding it to the cost of their products. This means that we can all be winners if we stamp out this practice.
Jamaica Gleaner News – Sergeant surrenders – Thursday | February 21, 2008
Jamaica Gleaner News – No bill payment fee, JN promises – Becomes JPS collector February 25 – Wednesday | February 20, 2008
Let us support Jamaica National’s JN Money Services Ltd. in their quest to eliminate utility bill payment fees for all consumers. We can guarantee their success if we pay our bills via JNMS. They have opted not to charge an additional fee beyond the commission paid by the utility companies (my assumption). This was the approach adopted originally by Paymaster before greed set and customers were bombarded with fees from the majority of players.
The challenges facing Jamaica National now is to create products that will attract additional business from the very significant number of persons who will be coming through their doors in the near future. They now have at least 16 other outlets that they can introduce ABM’s, branch type services on a limited scale, money transfer services and a whole host of other products. Also, they should not be afraid to go after other payment services such as cable rental fees, mobile phone top-up for Digicel, C & W, Miphone etc. now being dominated by other payment agencies as in the final analysis, customers prefer a one stop shop. This saves time all around, gas from driving between payment outlets, time off from work etc.
Jamaican telecoms not competing!
The major players in Jamaica’s telecommunications industry have stopped competing. This spells doom for consumers as without constant innovations and aggressive attempts to conquer the market, consumers will lose their pride of place as ‘Kings’. This must be a very short-sighted approach as without price as a basis of competition between the companies, we are left with a few options, services being the main one. This is an area however where all big Jamaican companies have fell short without exception. Most customer service representatives, although trained to be pleasant, lack the requisite technical knowledge to help any but the ‘casual’ caller. This makes it very annoying after an unsuccessful attempt to get assistance to hear them say, ‘thanks for making it Digicel’ or ‘thanks for calling C & W’.
All companies offer a fairly decent range of mobile phones at affordable prices but regrettably, they offer similar calling ‘plans’ at similar prices. Take for example ‘international calls’ form mobile phones.
Miphone’s ‘Miphone International’ offers calls to any USA or Canada number or any UK landline for just J$999. This gives you 1,000 minutes of talk time.
Digicel’s ‘Unlimited International’ is not really ‘unlimited’ and offers the exact 1,000 minutes for the same J$999.
Finally, Cable & Wireless, they were offering the same 1,000 minutes for J$999.
The same situation holds true for their other calling plans for pre-paid mobile. Digicel charges $12 to call the other networks during peak hours and $8 off-peak. C & W’s bMobile charges are $10 and $8 respectively. Both companies charges $3 for sending local text messages and $6 for send international text messages and I could go on and on and on.
We have to conclude that they have all decided to ‘rip’ of the consumers. They may as well announce a ‘joint’ board of directors to set prices. It appears that they have been able to ‘agree’ on prices without meeting officially. This cannot be good for consumers. How else can they all be charging the same prices? These companies all have different overhead expenses, they all have different size client bases and they have different size infrastructure. Somehow I was hoping that Carlos Slim’s America Movil’s entrance in the Jamaican market would have made a difference other than being ‘one of the boys’ but it is early days yet. He did not become the world’s richest man just by towing the line, so I am still expecting big things from Miphone.
The competition authorities should be looking into this.
