The saying, a picture is worth a thousand words, is especially true when one looks at the main picture of the Thursday Gleaner.

It was a picture of a section of the large crowd that went to a business place in search of jobs. The most alarming thing was that more than 600 persons had turned out to fill 10 vacant positions at the business place.

The article accompanying the story tells of the willingness of some people to do anything as long as it was legal and they were being paid. This crowd is just some of the many Jamaicans who want to work, but cannot find jobs.

Considering the economic crisis affecting world economies, it is very likely that more people will be joining the unemployment line, making this situation even worse.

Clearly, one of the major concerns that the Government needs to address is unemployment. It has been a plan of the current government for some time, but the public is still waiting to see the solutions. So, in the meantime, while unemployed parents cannot take care of their children or households, what are the alternatives?

How will they survive, how will they pay their bills? Is there a programme by the government to help affected households until they can help themselves through employment? It is hard, considering the economic conditions, for the government to wave a magic wand and fix the issue, but they need to do something urgently.

We need the Government to act now, put some support programme in place or help the people to help themselves, before the programme becomes too large to contain.