‘In RJRGLEANER, I see hope’

With Jamaica recording a decline of 12 per cent in murders since the start of 2023, when compared to last year, Reverend Astor Carlyle, pastor at Webster Memorial United Church, believes that members of the RJRGLEANER Communications Group can help in efforts to further push the figure down.

Since the start of the year, Jamaica has recorded 1,038 murders.

Carlyle on Tuesday expressed his confidence in media personnel during the 2023 RJRGLEANER Long Service Awards and Pensioners Luncheon and outlined how he views media employees as agents of change for Jamaica.

While addressing the event, where almost 1,000 RJRGLEANER staff members and pensioners were fêted, he said the strengths of the Group’s employees would help address the maladies that threaten the vitality and viability of Jamaica. Among those strengths, he included commitment; attention to detail; discipline; service above self; honour; integrity ;perseverance; the ability to both lead and follow, to execute with precision; and the ability to innovative, to adapt, to improvise and to overcome.

“You as a company of outstanding employees, some of whom we [honour] today, represent a cohort of talented skills that are needed in all areas of national life to be advocates of change,” Carlyle said.

In continuing, he stated his belief in how the media can help halt the crippling of the nation and encourage citizens to approach Jamaica’s challenges collectively as a people.

Carlyle also charged the RJRGLEANER Communications Group’s employees to go forth and exert positivity across the island.

“My RJRGLEANER Communications family, we cannot sit back in the face of escalating crime and violence, crassness, rudeness, nakedness, increasing economic and social inequity that continue to starve our people and the reputation of this nation,” Carlyle said.

“We each must commit to do something, even in our own small way, to make a difference. Part of your remit is to report the news, but as proven innovators and managers of change, my challenge to you today is to pursue a time of deep reflection and prayer. You have a huge voice and a huge platform for the articulation of virtues and values that can rescue this nation. In you, I see hope,” he said.

EXISTING FOR TRANSFORMATION

He said the RJRGLEANER Communications Group has a commitment to promote principles that are concerned with personal and national transformation.

“As I thought about what I would share with you today, so many issues came to mind, for we in Jamaica, and globally, to my mind, are in a time of unprecedented challenges. It would have been easy for me to speak exclusively about crime, for that’s an issue that should be at the forefront of our minds at this time,” he said.

Gary Allen, chief executive officer of the RJRGLEANER Communications Group, said the awards ceremony was being held in the 75th year since the incorporation of Radio Jamaica Limited and the 189th year since the inaugural publication of The Gleaner newspaper.

He, too, thanked the awardees for their years of service.

“Your service to our company, indeed your service to our country, is a blessing and the type of contribution that makes a nation proud,” Allen said.

“We operate in an industry where we are deep in the lives of everyone even when we hardly recognise it. We are there with people when they pick up the papers, the tablets, or their phones to read our output. We are there when people tune in to their various devices for our radio services. We are there when people turn on their devices to see us on TV and see our TV outputs. You all helped to make that possible. You all helped us to be there for our people,” he said.

More than 250 awards were presented for milestone service of five, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, and 50 years of service during the ceremony.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com