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Entertainment Sector Rebuked For Failing To Craft Their Own Re-Opening Strategy

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Jamaicanartistsreact

The Jamaica Music Society (JAMMS) and Jamaica Association of Composers Authors and Publishers (JACAP) have been sharply rebuked by the tourism sector for implying that it got preferential treatment to reopen early in the COVID-19 pandemic, while the entertainment sector remains on lockdown.

In a joint press release issued on the weekend batting for the Dancehall and Reggae fraternity, the island’s two music rights societies called for the Government to reopen the local entertainment sector, which has been in a state of dormancy for the last 15 months.

This they said had resulted in an almost wipeout of the income of a wide range of players in the cultural and creative industries.

JACAP’s General Manager Lydia Rose, had said the societies have suffered close to a 50 per cent fall-off in revenues, a direct result of the protracted lockdown of the sector and “other economic interruptions”.

According to her, the end result has been a “tremendous negative impact on members who earn a significant part of their income from the societies, as well as from live performances and touring”.

According to The Jamaica Observer, she had also argued that despite the submission of proposals from industry groups and interest groups, “more than a year has elapsed without any indication of when enhanced measures will be approved for safe resumption of economic activities…” and demanded that “a structured step-by-step process from application to host an event to approval of the event must be identified and published”.

The two organizations also argued that there are no longer any valid reasons that a reopening cannot take place with implementation and enforcement of COVID-19 protocols, as this has already been taking place in other jurisdictions and Jamaica now has a low positivity and hospitalisation rate, which will be bolstered by the imminent receipt  of additional doses of COVID-19 vaccines.

JACAP and JAMMS said that the perpetuation of the entertainment sector’s lockdown “will serve to fuel the historical narrative of the music and entertainment industries being undervalued and not being given meaningful policy priority across multiple administrations”.

“Other sectors and industries, most notably the tourism sector, have benefited from the policy of ‘balancing lives and livelihoods’. This approach needs to also be applied to the entertainment sector,”  general manager of JAMMS, Evon Mullings is quoted as saying.

That notation seems to have struck a nerve with their tourism compatriots, who sought to rubbish the assertions.

But in an article titled It’s all yours,’ JHTA tells entertainers pining after reopening which was published in the Jamaica Observer on Monday,  Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) president Clifton Reader said that the entertainment industry needs only to tweak the various elements of the tourism sector’s COVID mitigation plans in order to press the  Government to reopen entertainment.

The article also noted that the package of hugely successful tourism protocols which have kept staff and visitors safe from the COVID-19 disease, at an astounding positivity rate of under one per cent, is now at the disposal of the events and entertainment industry.

Also, in a sharp rebuke of JACAP and JAMMS in its editorial on Sunday, which was shared by tourism mogul and Chairman of the Jamaica Observer and  Sandals Resorts, Adam Stewart, The Jamaica Observer said that the tourism industry must not be blamed for being among the first sectors to reopen, as while they were hard at work putting in mitigation measures, the entertainment sector failed to come together to help their own selves.

According to the editorial, unlike the entertainment industry, tourism stakeholders had rapidly come together to look out for their own interests, and put mitigation measures in place, by conceptualizing the Tourism Resilient Corridor almost as soon as the country was shut down in late March last year.

“Now that the sleeping giant, the events and entertainment industry, has awaken to find itself at the back of the pack in the reopening of the economy, there are those who are looking around for someone or something to blame for their own sluggish response,” it said.

“They are pitching on the tourism industry, claiming rather disingenuously that the achievements by the sector were a result of its enjoyment of preferential treatment, and not its own effort driven by strong and forward-looking leadership.  Maybe one shouldn’t take them seriously because we do have a propensity in this country to play down even spectacular achievements in the saying “ah nuh nutten”,” the editorial added.

The editorial admonished the music sector to adopt the tourism industry’s blueprint and tweak it to suit their own agenda, as The Resilient Corridor has “since performed beyond all expectations, proving that the protocols work” with a “positivity rate of infections at only 0.6 per cent, established through testing of all visitors at the end of their stay”.