Tivoli bill on you
Published:Wednesday | June 2, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Arthur Hall, Senior Staff Reporter
The Government is to spend millions of dollars to repair buildings and other facilities damaged during last week's gun battle in Tivoli Gardens and adjoining communities.
Market vendors and other higglers who lost their goods and stalls during the three-day street firefight will also be given financial assistance to help them get back on their feet.
However, there is no tally yet on how much this will cost the State as representatives of the Social Development Commission and the Ministry of Labour are still in the communities con-ducting assessments.
"The Government has agreed to the process of returning Tivoli, Denham Town, Hannah Town, Fletcher's Land to normality," announced Minister of National Security Dwight Nelson at a Gleaner Editors' Forum yesterday.
"The buildings that were destroyed or damaged during the intervention process by the security forces will be repaired. The persons who had their furniture destroyed or damaged, they will be restored," Nelson added.
The security minister was responding to Professor Gordon Shirley, principal of the Monacampus of the University of the West Indies, who used the forum to issue a call for a sustainable restoration programme in the affected communities.
"When I saw Tivoli yesterday (Monday), I had the sense of a community that has been through a disaster. We are used to seeing communities looking this way when they are changed by the passage of something.
"Well, this community (Tivoli) was changed by a man-made force, and you have to go back into that environment and try to restore them and try to restore dignity," Shirley said.
"The people whose doors have been kicked off, the doors should be replaced. The State kicked them off, the State should replace them. The people whose walls are marked by gunshots all over the place, if this was uptown, the State would fix them, and the State has to restore it to what it was," added Shirley.
Last week's conflict was precipitated by an attempt by soldiers and the police to arrest Tivoli enforcer Christopher 'Dudus' Coke - who is wanted in the United States on drug and gun charges - but militants sympathetic to Coke's cause threw down the gauntlet.
Residents of Tivoli Gardens and surrounding communities have claimed that several houses were ransacked by members of the security forces.
Yesterday, several residents again pleaded for assistance as they showed a Gleaner team damaged buildings with doors kicked in and locks broken.