Jamaica
News - Real Estate - General (January
19, 2005)
Jamaica on track to meet millennium development goals
JAMAICA is on track to meeting a
number of the millennium development goals adopted by 189 countries at the
Millennium Summit held in 2000, but is lagging far behind in a number of key
indicators such as combatting HIV/AIDS, and reducing the death rate of children
under five and improving maternal health.
However, the finance minister, Omar Davies,
who spoke Monday at the launch of the National Millennium Development Report at
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kingston, said he was concerned that the
growing problem of male educational under-achievement was ballooning into a
national crisis, with implications for the future of the society as it is linked
to escalating crime levels among young men.
"Jamaica has a very real gender bias against
men, even as we address the disparities against women... what is the more
fundamental question is why is it that our males are more attracted to a life of
crime, why is it that our boys are being turned off educational
attainment," said Davies.
The report details the country's progress in
attaining the goals by 2015 in areas such as eradicating extreme poverty,
achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering
women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combatting HIV/AIDS,
malaria and other diseases and ensuring environmental sustainability.
Davies, who had last year expressed his
exasperation with young male criminals in his own inner-city constituency of
South St Andrew, said the trend has serious implications for the future of the
society, not the least being the increased resources required to fight crime and
the social dilemma of educated young women not being able to find suitable
partners.
"As a father of two daughters I have to
be concerned about this," said Davies.
In presenting the report on Jamaica, Dr Pauline
Knight, director of the Social and Manpower Division of the Planning Institute
of Jamaica (PIOJ), showed that young men were committing most crimes and were
far more prone to committing suicide at a rate five times their female
counterparts, while women had virtually doubled the educational attainment of
males at tertiary levels at a ratio of 1.99 in 2001 compared to 1.26 in 1990,
which contributed to the country being rated as lagging in the area of promoting
gender equality in the millennium development goals.
A breakdown of the country's performance shows
that poverty levels had declined from 28.4 per cent in 1990 to 16.8 per cent in
2001, which meant that it was on track to halving the proportion of persons
whose income fell below the poverty line; and had achieved near universal or 96
per cent universal primary education.
However, Jamaica was regarded as far behind in
reducing child mortality at 26.6 per 1,000 from 28.5 per 1,000 births, against a
benchmark of reducing it by two thirds; while HIV/AIDS cases had increased from
70 in 1990 to 6,401 cases in 2002, which meant that the country is seriously
lagging behind if it is to meet the goal of reversing the spread of the virus by
2015.
Jamaica was also behind in reducing maternal
mortality, or the death of women in childbirth, recording a rate of 106.2 per
100,000 of the population in 2001, marginally down from the 119.7 recorded in
1990, but well below what is required to reduce maternal mortality by three
quarters come 2015.
However, in the important area of promoting
access to safe drinking water, seen as critical to ensuring environmental
sustainability, the country was seen as being on track with 29.1 per cent of
persons without access to piped water in 2001, down from 38.8 per cent in 1990,
the report said.
Juan Carlos Espinola, the new United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative to Jamaica, commended the
government for putting together a high quality report, noting in particular the
wealth of information provided on social indicators and the documents' highly
detailed and time-bound goals.
The report, he said, underscored the need for
Jamaica and other countries in the region to come together to "make the
great leap forward in meeting overall human development goals".
|
