Let’s fight crime together – Duncan
Published:Monday | March 9, 2020 | 12:29 AM
Citing that both major political parties were guilty of manipulating serious social issues, Keith Duncan, co-chairman of the Economic Programme Oversight Committee (EPOC), has renewed his call for a unified response to confront crime, public order, and human capital development.
“I believe that what we need is a national consensus in areas where we have deficits in our society,” he said while addressing the official opening ceremony of Expo 2020, held at the Montego Bay Convention Centre on the weekend.
“That’s where we must ensure that we are all on the same page as a country because we are at a crisis level in those areas.”
Duncan, who is also president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), is in support of Prime Minister Andrew Holness’s plan – announced in 2017 – to use the National Partnership Council (NPC) as a platform to discuss issues such as crime and public order. The Government, Opposition, Church, private sector, and civil society are all represented at the meetings.
The EPOC head argued that crime was not a short-term problem, pointing out that Jamaica had created a monster through years of underinvestment in the Jamaica Constabulary Force. The country, he said, had also failed at promoting culture change throughout the force.
“There is a narrative that the crime plan is SOE or ZOSO, (but) there are three pillars (involved in the anti-crime strategy),” he said in reference to the most recent Sectoral Debate presentation by National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang. Duncan was referring to states of emergency and zones of special operations.
THREE PILLARS
The three pillars identified were suppression, investment in capacity, and social intervention. “These are the three elements that are being built out. Forty billion dollars spent in building out the infrastructure, the technology, equipping our police force because we give them basket fi carry water and then turn around and cuss them that they not doing a good job.”
“We have to support our civil service and our police because they face a daunting task in the streets,” he continued.
The EPOC president said that public order hung on four key elements: an effective traffic management system; the full roll-out of JamaicaEye; the Noise Aabatement Act, and reducing the high rate of fatal motorcycle accidents, particularly in Westmoreland.
Eighty-three people have been killed from a total of 73 fatal crashes as at March 3. Of that group, motorcyclists are the leading cohort as accident fatalities, at 23. The next-highest crash fatalities are pedestrians at 18.
Duncan said that social intervention was important in reducing poverty and rescuing 150,000 unattached people. He also said that the country needs to get corruption under control.