Skatta Burrell Says Political Parties Should Stage Competition For MPs To Deliver On Promises

Coolie Dance producer Skatta Burrell has given the side-eye to a proposal made by Environment Minister, Matthew Samuda, for a plastic collection competition between the country’s two major political parties, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the Peoples National Party (PNP).

Samuda had made the proposal on Tuesday, during a Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation plastic forum in St Andrew. 

According to him, once the Parliament legislates the deposit refund scheme, the competition can get underway between the two parties. 

But in responding to the Gleaner report about Samuda’s comments, Skatta, had one question which he aimed at the politician.

“How bout Competition on MP delivering on many promises and who can uplift their respective constituents furthest????” Skatta asked.    

The Reggae Sumfest executive’s statement was endorsed by several commenters, one of whom noted: “@skattaburrell dem fi get tag…This is a great idea @jlpjamaica @pnpjamaica”.

During the forum on Tuesday, Samuda had outlined that under the deposit refund scheme, a deposit fee will be charged at the point of purchase, and refunded to the purchaser when the bottle is returned via a specifically designed system.

The politician had then outlined how the scheme could proceed.

“JLP versus PNP plastic collection. There is nothing more competitive than politics anywhere in the world. I propose that as a mechanism to help collect the significant plastic waste in the environment, that we mobilise the political base of both parties and we compete to see who can collect the most,” the Minister said. 

The Minister also argued that that the competition would demonstrate political maturity, and send the right signal, as the political attitudes towards environmental protection and management has been moving from infancy to maturity.

The Minister’s statements came just two weeks after Agent Sasco , who is a brand ambassador for Recycling Partners, expressed confidence that Jamaica’s repugnant littering and illicit garbage-dumping problems can be abated in the near future.

The Order of Distinction awardee had taken to Instagram to showcase photographs of Balingen in Germany and Como in Italy, with two waterways bereft of garbage, to illustrate that the same could be done in Jamaica if everyone unites.

The Loco artiste had also pointed out that recycling would remove at plastic bottles which is one major contributor to the litter problem, and that not only would it increase the capacity of the current system to manage other waste, but that money would be generated from recycling which “can be spent on improving our communities”.       

Plastics, he had said, were “a good place to start”, and when the  culture of recycling becomes cemented, other materials can be introduced, as the nation would have “gathered the lessons and data to roll out the other programs more efficiently and effectively”.

In addition, he had also contended that many Jamaicans had not “made the connection that all the pollution in the rivers eventually end up on the beaches and in the sea, to which many of his compatriots flock on holidays.  

In February Sasco has renewed his role of brand ambassador for Recycling Partners of Jamaica.  In 2021 he had spent time promoting the company’s objectives of recycling polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastics, through a series of activities, including the Friendship Gap project in St. Mary, where he successfully mobilized residents, to try to create a recycling town.

Under that project, community members moving beyond plastics to electronics and glass bottles and aluminium, to create a holistic recycling area. 

The Hope River artist, whose given name is Jeffrey Campbell, will be part of the RPJ’s planning committee, which creates and executes cluster projects, with an aim of recycling 800 million plastic bottles by the end of 2022.

Sasco is also assisting the RPJ to replicate the Friendship Gap project in other areas of the island, such as Melrose Hill in Manchester and Faith’s Pen in St Ann.