Make crippling crime a priority, Mahfood urges Gov’t
Published:Wednesday | August 11, 2021 | 12:10 AM
President of the Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association (JMEA) John Mahfood is bemoaning the “disastrous effect” crime is having on the society and economy.
A surge in violent crimes this year has pushed the murder rate up by eight per cent year-on-year.
As at August 5, there were 851 murders reported islandwide, 68 more than the corresponding period in 2020. More granular analysis reveals an uptick in murders in nine of the 19 police divisions.
Mahfood said that crime continues to keep investors away from Jamaica, drives away graduates and professionals who fear for their lives and also believe the economy is too weak to sustain them.
In a Gleaner interview, the new JMEA president said that Jamaica’s crime problem was the most significant issue that was holding the economy and country back, citing the overall four to five per cent impact on the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
“After 30 years of this five per cent on GDP, the impact is that our per capita income is the lowest in the Caribbean – except for Haiti – and the people of Jamaica have suffered because the economy is bad, the jobs are not there, the tourists are not coming in the extent to which they should be coming,” Mahfood argued.
The businessman contended that Jamaica had the capacity to woo a greater number of tourists to the island but indicated that the crime problem posed a barrier.
He said that for years, ministers of national security and commissioners of police have said they did the best they could with limited resources and developed long-term plans to tackle crime but nobody had been held to account because the plans transcend administrations.
“What I would want to see some government finally saying we have to put in the resources that are necessary to overcome the problem of lack of police, lack of vehicles, lack of computers. Put in the resources so they can get on top of the violence and start to bring it under control and to fast-track the legal things that need to be done,” Mahfood told The Gleaner.
”Until one government decides that this is enough and this is the top priority, we will continue on this tide of high crime rate and low growth in the economy,” he added.
He said that in 2020, the strict COVID measures in terms of curfews, coupled with zones of special operations and states of emergency, had some effect on slowing down the murders. However, he noted that with the relaxed measures, including the reduction in curfew hours, the country was seeing a resurgence in murders.
Mahfood said that it has been disappointing not just to the business sector, but the country at large, that successive governments have not been able to bring murder rates down since the 1970s.