It represents a dramatic variation in the direction of the country as it relates to the recent literacy initiative of the Ministry of Education and also the recently published Vision 2030 Jamaica: National Development Plan, which predicts development status for Jamaica by the year 2030.

Certainly printed material cannot be considered a luxury item when less than 64 per cent of Jamaica's populace is reading at the appropriate levels. Ray Bradbury states, "You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." We are gambling with the future of our nation.

Florence Agreement

Further, it is our belief that Jamaica, as a member of UNESCO, should continue to observe the requirements of 'The Florence Agreement' which prohibits the imposition of custom and other charges on books, publication and documents as indicated in Annex A of the agreement

The association has a keen interest in the criteria for the determination of printed material which will be classified as educational and religious items. It is noted that textbooks will not be taxed, and while this provision appears to be in consideration of education, it is also unsound as what defines a text is relative to the institution.

Most institutions prescribe their own books as the recommended manual of instruction in any subject area or branch of study and this will, in essence, become the text.

A prescribed text in an academic library may also be classified as supplementary reading in a public library. This subjective selection will serve only to provide uncertainty and ambiguity for all stakeholders and deprive access to all types of reading material already out of the reach of the average person while creating insurmountable administrative challenges for tax administrators, book distributors, publishers and booksellers and their repositories at the respective points of sale.

Limited budgets

Already, members of the association are operating within limited budgets with no anticipated increases in their budgetary allocations; imagine what this will translate to for schools, teachers, parents, public, school, academic and institutional libraries and other information centres.

Jamaican educators struggle daily to cultivate a reading nation by encouraging the reading habits and the development of information literacy skills with the desired objective to develop rounded and informed citizens, this imposition will significantly affect the work of all member institutions of LIAJA, its clients and the nation as a whole in an increasingly information-dependent society.

The association trusts that the Government would have already recognised the pitfalls of the imposition of GCT on printed material. We implore the relevant administrators to heed the call from all stakeholders and address the issue with alacrity.

We must as a nation take seriously the advice of Marcus Garvey "One must never stop reading. Read everything that you can that is of standard knowledge. The idea is that personal experience is not enough for a human to get all the useful knowledge of life, because the individual life is too short, so we must feed on the experience of others." LIAJA stands with our national hero on this germane matter.