Commentary

Grief or publicity stunt?

CLOSING YOUR BUSINESS for half day in respect to the death of worker has become a national pastime now for industries and groups since the Private Sector of Jamaica's fiasco of a publicity stunt a couple weeks ago following the shooting of businessman Maurice Azan.

As P says, shutting down your shop to mourn death really now seems like the chic thing to do in the business community. So LG Brown is killed and the gas stations announce that they will close for half day on the day of his funeral. (To hell with the consequences on national productivity and the long lines of panicked consumers who will no doubt turn up at stations either the day before or the day after this grand show of national mourning for this honourable man).

Is the show of collective mourning a good or a bad thing and just how far will it go? Well figure this, the murder rate is running somewhere between 5 to 7 per day it seems (Oops of course I guess the police can dispute this with the statistics that they don't make public, right? Well P and I dutifully stand corrected.

And if it is 8 or 10 a day we admit here that we got it wrong] Anyway back to the locking shop issue. If we all get serious about mourning for loved ones with collective closure of all related businesses that someone worked at, we might as well declare 2005 the national year of mourning and probably designate alternate days with half days off to show respect for those who have died and those who are to die!

Are we cynics? Hell yes we are, let's get a grip here while not trying to behave as if we are so comfortable with the spiralling rate of crime, let's get with the programme.

Just how far will it go? Of course right now it will depend on who dies. Certainly our average Joes and Janes from the country who just happen to be the majority of people who get killed are hardly even thought about. In fact if we follow the authorities we will not even know the names of those who have been killed. They are relegated to mere numbers and incidents - if we are lucky to hear at all.

P and I hope that this time we are cynically wrong and that there is some point to shutting down the businesses to mourn the passing of a loved one. There must be some sort of positive outcome to this idea. Right?

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