Traffic fines to be pumped into lock-ups
Published:Wednesday | July 27, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Arthur Hall, Senior Staff Reporter
National Security Minister Dwight Nelson has vowed to go after motorists who owe more than $3 billion in traffic fines and to use that money to improve the conditions in the nation's police lock-ups.
In February Prime Minister Bruce Golding told Parliament that the Inland Revenue Department had not received payment for about one million outstanding traffic tickets totalling more than $3 billion, but said measures were being implemented to collect that money.
Yesterday, Nelson told The Gleaner that he was going after the money as it is well needed.
Nelson's comment came after he accepted a challenge from head of the European Union (EU) delegation in Jamaica, Ambassador Marco Mazzocchi Alemanni, to speedily improve conditions in the police lock-ups.
Lock-up improvements
According to Nelson, the outstanding traffic fines would provide the cash to make the improvements in the lock-ups.
"We will go after more than $2 billion in outstanding traffic fines and use that money to fix police stations and lock-ups," a confident Nelson told The Gleaner.
Earlier, addressing the signing ceremony for contracts valued at $24 million to renovate five police stations in the Corporate Area Mazzocchi Alemanni expressed concern about the conditions under which police personnel work and the state of the lock-ups.
"I would like to make a plea to the Government ... to try in its next programmes with us, its other partners or on its own, to improve conditions in lock-ups because they are really bad," Mazzocchi Alemanni said.
He argued that he was not trying to impose a European standard on Jamaica, as bad lock-up conditions could be found in some countries in Europe.
"But we are here in Jamaica and we would like to see those lock-up conditions be commensurate with the level of the very civil country, a very warm country, a very humane country that Jamaica is," Mazzocchi Alemanni added.
Contracts were signed for repairs to the Cross Roads, Allman Town, Half-Way-Tree, Matilda's Corner and the barracks at the Hunts Bay police stations.
Work is to be completed by the end of this year, or the money, which is being provided under the EU's Poverty Reduction Programme II (PRP II), will no longer be available.
The EU is spending more than $7 billion under PRP II to reduce poverty and fight crime in Jamaica.