MARK Golding opened his address to the public session of the Opposition People’s National Party’s (PNP) 85th Annual Conference on Sunday telling cheering Comrades and the wider Jamaica that the time has come “to break every chain” that is holding the country back. Golding, in a fiery speech focusing on a wide range of issues, also said the party is on a mission “to move from fiscal stability to economic transformation” that will build a better Jamaica. The opening stanza of the address inside the National Arena in St Andrew was a clear response to criticism he has been receiving since his participation in a slavery skit at his St Andrew Southern constituency conference two Sundays ago. In that skit Golding unlocked a chain around the neck of a supporter who had declared that he was being held in bondage by Prime Minister Andrew Holness. It resulted in critics accusing Golding and the PNP of making light of the country’s painful experience of slavery. However, Golding, despite being stung by the criticism, launched a counteroffensive on Sunday, pointing to his family’s history of service to Jamaica and declaring that he was not intimidated by his political opponents. “I have said it before, and will tell you again, Jamaica cannot move forward without a Government built on integrity that embraces principles of good governance. That is what I believe in. That is how I live my life. I, Mark Jefferson Golding, am a born Jamaican, a son of the soil. I come from a family that has given great service to the people of this country, giving selfless service to ordinary Jamaicans and building lasting institutions of inclusion to empower persons with disabilities. That is my family tradition,” the PNP president said to deafening cheers. “I am who I am. I am offering myself to the Jamaican people for service in their interests, with the skills, knowledge, and experience I have gained in life. I don’t come to scrape. I come to serve all Jamaicans, and I come with clean hands and a clean heart. “Whatever depraved and divisive vulgarities my political opponents may stoop to in their desperation to hold onto power, I will not be daunted. I have no fear of them. I stand firm in leading our party in our mission of social and economic transformation to a better Jamaica for all our people,” he said. That transformation, he argued, requires a clean break from our traumatic colonial history. “We are still living with vestiges of the past that are holding us back, that’s why a British king is still our head of state; that’s why we are not fully on board with the Caribbean Court of Justice; that’s why we are so violent in how we deal with each other; that’s why we don’t respect our own Jamaican language; that’s why we still deny communities access to their beaches; and that’s why we see the Government bulldozing of the homes of vulnerable Jamaicans — people who the State ought to be protecting, not oppressing,” Golding said. “It is time to free the Jamaican people from the deep sense of frustration and oppression that comes from a system that is not working for the majority of our people,” he said, adding that the country must not squander the chance of constitutional reform now being undertaken by a committee which has, among its members, Government and Opposition legislators. “The constitution is the overarching guide to the way the whole system operates; the rules we make for ourselves and the processes that govern our lives as a people. It is not a meal deal, it is a big deal,” he declared. “As a first step, we must reform our constitution to complete the decolonisation process. We in the PNP have no interest in moving to a republic while retaining the King’s Privy Council in London as Jamaica’s final court. Time come for full decolonisation,” Golding said. “Jamaicans need a final court where they don’t need a visa to go there, and where the costs are not way out of their reach. Time come for a Jamaican head of State and the Caribbean Court of Justice as our final court. We will support both moving forward together. We have no interest in one without the other,” he added. After his address Golding, in an interview with journalists, expanded on his statement regarding Jamaica’s final court. Asked if the Opposition would not support the reform process if the issues of the Caribbean Court of Justice and Jamaican head of State were not twinned, he said, “I don’t really want to put that on the table at this time, but we really have little interest with proceeding with one and not the other. It just doesn’t make any sense at all. “The Privy Council came out of slavery and, as part of moving forward, we need to adopt the Caribbean Court of Justice which Jamaica helped to design, helped to finance, and we have a judge on the court. It is an excellent court, it has been well received internationally for the quality of its judgments, and we’re depriving our people of access to justice, so we have no interest in moving forward without it. What that ultimately means for voting in Parliament, I don’t want to get into that today.” Asked if that position meant that the party will withdraw its participation in the reform process, Golding said “No.” He reminded that the PNP sat out two meetings of the committee after the Government, in July, tabled in Parliament and used its majority to pass the Constitution (Amendment of Sections 96[1] and 121[1]) Act, 2023, which moves the retirement age of the director of public prosecutions and the auditor general from 60 to 65 without any prior consultation with the Opposition or the Constitutional Reform Committee. Describing the move as another display of “arrogance and bad governance” by the Government, he said, “But once we decided to take that matter to

Dr Peter Phillips on Sunday charged thousands of People’s National Party (PNP) supporters to vote in the next elections, saying they have a date with destiny to rescue the country because Jamaicans are growing “increasingly doubtful about the future”. In easily the most cerebral address at the public session of the PNP’s 85th Annual Conference Dr Phillips, who is now retired after serving as PNP president and Opposition leader from 2017 to 2020, told Comrades that the party needed to “set out a new mission for the salvation of our country and the renewal of our democracy”. “The future of our country demands a re-energised political process. It demands a new kind of political engagement like we’ve never seen before,” Phillips said to loud and sustained cheers and applause inside the packed National Arena in St Andrew. “The party has to set out a vision of a revived nationhood. It has to set out a vision of social transformation and we have to energise the people in the same way that Norman Manley’s generation did it – going from door to door, town to town,” he said in reference to the founders of the party who chose Manley as the PNP’s first president in 1938. “I want to talk to you about that deeper encounter with destiny that is involved in these elections that are coming. The next elections are not just about changing one set of ministers for another set of ministers. It’s not about replacing one set of office holders in all the agencies with another set of office holders,” Phillips said. “The next elections are about rescuing the country. The next elections are about improving the direction of our future as a country, and as a people. If truth be told, despite all the gains that have been made in Jamaica since 1938, and despite all that has been achieved since Independence, the people of the country are increasingly doubtful about the future,” Phillips said. Pointing to the latest employment data released by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (Statin), Phillips said, while he had no quarrel with the numbers being reported, the country cannot be satisfied with the metrics used to measure employment. “We can’t be satisfied with calling somebody who a wipe window at stop sign and traffic light an employed person. We can’t call people who work one hour a week, according to what Statin numbers say, an employed person. Not to mention that even though they say they have the highest number of employed people, you have more than a half a million Jamaicans who not even looking for work. Many of them drawn into the world of criminality and violence,” he argued. In relation to education Phillips said, “According to this Government’s own numbers, more than 50 per cent of the students leaving primary school and going to high school can’t read and write. We can’t go on this way.” Turning his attention to squatter communities, Phillips said that they are not populated by lazy people, but rather by some of the hardest working people in the world. “The squatter communities represent one of the most obscene and degrading elements of the inheritance of plantation slavery and the plantation economy. It represents generations of all those formerly enslaved people who were turned out from the plantation. Time come now for us to solve that problem that has been bedevilling us for too long,” he said, eliciting more loud cheers. He said that because of all these conditions people are not only doubtful about the future, they’re “beginning to doubt the democratic system that we have”. “Sixty per cent of the voters never even bother to turnout in the last elections; and poll after poll tell us that 50 per cent and more don’t have any trust in the political system and leadership in the country. We can’t go on like this.” He said the PNP needs to rescue the country, including supporters of the governing Jamaica Labour Party “for a better Jamaica with a different future”. “There is no place in this for political gimmickry. It is not enough, as I said, to beat the other party, we have to mobilise a nation. I know you can do it, and I know the People’s National Party can do it. Only the People’s National Party has the vision. Only the People’s National Party has the tradition of activism to do it. Only the People’s National Party has the record of doing it,” Phillips told the cheering Comrades. “So I say to this conference, a date with destiny awaits you. The country’s future is in your hands. So let the trumpet sound and let us all, under the leadership of the party leader, answer that call. Let us, from this arena, light the torch of national revival and renewal. Let us stand once more for the cause of our own native land, Jamaica, land we love.”

THE tribute from Sagicor Group Jamaica best described R Danny Williams: “Insurance pioneer, philanthropist, and nation-builder extraordinaire.” R Danvers “Danny” Williams, the man who founded Life of Jamaica (LOJ) — now Sagicor Life Jamaica — in 1970, died on Saturday at a hospital in Miami, Florida, USA, where he had undergone surgery. He was 89. His passing was met with sorrow among Jamaica’s political and business communities who recalled his selfless contribution to the country spanning six decades. “He ranks within the highest echelons of committed leaders who have contributed beyond measure to the growth and esteem of our island. He was a towering giant in the fields of business, education, institution building and deserving charitable causes,” former Prime Minister PJ Patterson said, adding that Jamaica was poorer for Williams’ passing. “I have lost a precious friend and an invaluable political colleague,” added Patterson who, in the 1970s, served alongside Williams in the Cabinet of then Prime Minister Michael Manley (now deceased). “No words are sufficient to thank Shirley, his lifelong partner, for sharing him so generously with the entire country and taking such good care of him. To her and the family — by blood and extended — we express our profound sympathy. All Jamaica is bereaved,” said Patterson. Prime Minister Andrew Holness, in a post on Twitter, expressed sadness at the passing of a man who “made remarkable contributions across various fields”. “May his life and legacy continue to inspire us as we recall with gratitude his service to public life and within the private sector, which has positively impacted the Jamaican landscape,” Holness said. Retired Opposition leader and People’s National Party (PNP) President Dr Peter Phillips said he was saddened by Williams’ passing. He said Williams was “a truly great Jamaican and a pioneering spirit who contributed tremendously to the development of his country and its institutions”. Noting the period in the 1970s when Williams served as minister of industry and commerce, Phillips said, “He was courageous enough to serve in the Administration despite the turbulence at the time.” He also recalled Williams’ “stellar contribution” at his alma mater Jamaica College, saying that it “must also be lauded as he steered the committee that undertook the rehabilitation of the college campus along with other old boys”. Current Opposition leader and PNP President Mark Golding described Williams as a true Jamaican patriot who served, both in the private sector and the public sector, with great distinction. “He was a pioneer in developing an indigenous life insurance industry, and built a reputation for even-handedness, great integrity, and commercial acumen,” Golding said. “Danny’s legendary prowess in raising funds for worthy causes is unmatched in modern Jamaica, and several important institutions have benefited from those efforts,” added Golding. Sagicor President and CEO Christopher Zacca said Williams “was deeply loved, respected and admired by colleagues, employees, and industry peers alike for his integrity and compassion”. He described Williams’ contribution to Jamaica as “immense” and said he leaves behind a “tremendous legacy”. Zacca said Williams steered the company through significant milestones and challenges, leaving an indelible mark on its 53-year history. “His visionary leadership, unwavering dedication, and commitment to excellence were unparalleled and sowed the seeds for Sagicor Group Jamaica’s (SGJ) growth into a regional powerhouse. In 2017, in recognition of his service to SGJ, he was named as director emeritus,” Zacca shared. “The profound impact of our beloved Danny will continue to shape the future and direction of Sagicor. His departure has left a void in our hearts at Sagicor and indeed the entire Jamaican business community.” Williams was only 18 years old when he joined North American Life Assurance Company as a salesman, in 1953. Within seven years he was appointed branch manager for Jamaica, and over the next decade he guided the branch to the number one position in the company’s international network. Eventually he founded LOJ and built it into one of the largest insurance firms in the Caribbean. Williams served as president and CEO of the company on two separate occasions, but in the midst of the 1990s financial meltdown he ceded control of the company to the State-run Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac). Barbados Mutual Life Assurance Society and Life of Barbados acquired majority interest in LOJ some years later. Barbados Mutual in turn acquired LOJ, which was rebranded as Sagicor. Williams remained a shareholder with 12.33 million shares through his company Ravers Limited at the time. When the rebranding programme was being rolled out in Jamaica, Williams was the most known face at the press conference table, endorsing the new name and assuring the Jamaican clientèle it was business as usual, but even better than before. For his services to Jamaica, Williams was invested with the national honours of Commander of the Order of Distinction in 1972 and the Order of Jamaica in 1993. He was conferred with the degree of Doctor of Laws (Hon) by University of Technology, Jamaica in 2005. Jamaica Chamber of Commerce President Michael McMorris, in his tribute on Saturday, described Williams as the quintessential trailblazer in Jamaica’s post-Independence era. “The fact that he was able to successfully mobilse his ideas as an entrepreneur and eventual business mogul, and then also serve with distinction in the public sector as a minister of Government underscores the rare qualities and drive possessed by this great Jamaican icon,” McMorris said.

The Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) enters the public session of its 85th annual conference on Sunday with a bold bid to lift its stock and fix rough spots on the road to regaining the reins of State power. The event comes at a time when verbal blows unleashed against a media house recently by General Secretary Dayton Campbell, and a slavery depiction stunt at a constituency conference last Sunday may have eroded some support and respect from Jamaica’s oldest relevant political party. The National Arena is expected to be full to capacity soon after the event’s 10:00 am start, thus forcing those who normally gather on the outside to have a smoke, put down a few drinks, and listen occasionally to the list of speakers … to continue their age-old practice, duly decked out in orange shirts or any colour close to that. The first two days of the conference, held at Jamaica Conference Centre on Friday and Saturday, were dedicated to private sessions, which included addresses by party president Mark Golding, who was returned, unopposed as head of the organisation on Friday; and retired president, PJ Patterson, a former prime minister of Jamaica, on Saturday. Golding will not only be aiming to deliver the main address of his life on Sunday, after an introduction by energetic candidate for St Elizabeth South Western, Miranda Wellington, but could fall short if, in that address, he does not answer some of the burning issues surrounding candidate selection for the next general election, and how his party would tackle national issues that continue to choke the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). Those issues involve the island’s high crime rate, controlling inflation, providing affordable housing to the populace; banking reform investment regulation — zeroing on the ongoing Stocks and Securities situation with many losing their investments from the insolvent firm, including national icon Usain Bolt; teacher emigration at the centre of a wider brain drain, behaviour of public transport operators on the road, among others. Although he might not bring it to the forefront, Golding will later on be forced to address the matter of Campbell, who is prone to making erratic statements that often put the party into disrepute, and who has grown unpopular inside and outside of the organisation. Golding also finds himself trailing Prime Minister Andrew Holness by 17 percentage points: 37-20, as to who is better suited to move Jamaica forward, in the latest Nationwide Blue Dot poll commissioned by Nationwide News Network — a worrisome decline from the statistical dead heat that he registered in the June poll conducted by Dr Don Anderson’s Market Research Services. The Blue Dot poll also cited the JLP with 35 per cent, as the party that is best suited to lead Jamaica now, compared to 23 per cent for the PNP. Also of worry to Golding must be the Blue Dot party standings that show the JLP with 31 per cent support, over the PNP’s 25 per cent. The June Anderson poll gave the PNP 30.2 per cent national support, in contrast to the JLP’s 25 per cent — a clear lead even when the plus or minus three per cent margin of error is factored in. A year ago, the tables were reversed, as the PNP then had 18 per cent support among the committed electorate, while the JLP had 34 per cent. Now that the Nationwide Blue Dot poll has revealed other findings, it will be interesting to see how the numbers will turn in the next poll by Anderson. The PNP intends to unveil the majority of 63 candidates, just over 45, the Sunday Observer was told, that it will field in the next general election, expected in around two years, but already there is concern that the right methodology is not being used to select the appropriate people who can engage the electorate. Although the PNP has called them ‘provisional’ candidates, most are expected to be ratified prior to nomination day. Many PNP supporters in some constituencies are unhappy with some of those who have been chosen so far, among them Golding ally Ian Hayles, a fiery former Member of Parliament in Hanover Western, who has switched to Westmoreland Western amid a row that led to the exit from the party of three PNP councillors in the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation — two defecting to the JLP and the other making an about turn on Friday, after spending time warming the seats of the independent lounge. Also in Westmoreland, a storm of sorts is brewing in Central, following the catapulting of Dwayne Vaz, a considered underperformer of the last PNP Administration, to occupy the bench in preparation for the next election, over others who are considered more worthy. The selection, too, of Lawrence Rowe in Kingston Central has forced many to ask what kind of political strokes the newcomer would be qualified to play, were he to gain the nod over the incumbent Donovan Williams. The seat has been represented by high-profile PNP individuals in the past, among them former prime minister Michael Manley; Ralph Brown, a former Minister of Local Government; and Rhodes Scholar Ronald Thwaites, who served as Minister of Education. The party going for Lorane Ferguson in St Mary South Eastern to compete against incumbent Dr Norman Dunn has also opened up deep conversations; likewise Colin Bell over veteran educator Owen Speid in Portland Eastern. Then, word surfaced on Friday that habitual loser Patrick Roberts could, again, be asked to run against Holness in St Andrew West Central, which is bound to raise further concerns, and potentially reduce the party’s image, as Roberts has lost to Holness five times in a row. On the other hand, checks done by the Jamaica Observer have shown that the PNP has been commended in large measure for the selection of candidates such as Golding’s hand picked man, Dr Alfred Dawes in St Catherine South Eastern; Wellington in St Elizabeth, Nekeisha Burchell in St James Southern; Dr Aujae Dixon

SAVANNA-LA-MAR, Westmoreland — Less than 24 hours after two of his former Comrades joined the Jamaica Labour Party, Councillor Lawton McKenzie on Friday morning declared his return to the People’s National Party, giving both parties six seats each in the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation (WMC). This is the latest move in a political chess match for control of the local body which, like Thursday, will again throw the next council meeting in chaos. Ian Myles, who along with McKenzie and Garfield James held aloft resignation letters in July to signal their departure from the PNP, initially dismissed McKenzie’s back-pedalling as inconsequential. “His addition to their numbers is neither here nor there, as far as I am concerned,” Myles told the Jamaica Observer Friday afternoon. He opted not to explain his reasoning in order not to give away the JLP’s next move. However, Myles later said McKenzie’s vote does, in fact, count but only because of what he alleged is playing with the rules concerning the position of mayor and chairman of the corporation, Bertel Moore. “It will affect the numbers because there is a split, and if it is not played out based on rules then you can have divisiveness — as we had yesterday [Thursday] — if the chairman is oblivious to the law,” stated Myles. He was referring to Thursday’s meeting which Moore abruptly ended before the JLP side had a chance to oust him. “The chairman cannot try his own self; he cannot preside over his own fate, so he should have recused himself when it reached the point yesterday [Thursday] at the meeting,” argued Myles. However, vice-president of the PNP with responsibility for minority councillors, Norman Scott disagreed. He told the Observer that the mayor has a vote under the Representation of the People Act. “A chairman has a casting vote and an original vote; therefore, the chairman has two votes,” stated Scott. Those are issues that will no doubt be hammered out at future meetings of the corporation as the tussle for power continues. Meanwhile, in an interesting twist on Friday, Scott maintained that McKenzie’s resignation had not been accepted so, in reality, he never left the PNP. “There was a picture in the papers with three councillors showing that they have written letters of resignation, [but] none came from Councillor McKenzie and therefore we could not have said that he had resigned from the party,” stated Scott. “He was quoted as saying that he is an independent member, but he was advised that he is still a member of the People’s National Party,” he added. McKenzie agreed with that assessment, but only hours earlier he had declared, “I have come home to the party that I have served for my entire adult life, the People’s National Party!”

THE labour ministry has indicated that it will be re-engaging the group of farm workers who were unceremoniously shipped back here last month after they in June blew the whistle on their farm’s management over their sub-par living conditions. Friday, the ministry, in response to questions from the Jamaica Observer regarding the welfare of the workers, said upon conclusion of its investigations “regarding the recent subset of farm workers who were prematurely repatriated in early August” it has “decided to place the workers on other farms when the new season of operations begin in January 2024”. According to the ministry, it “can confirm”, that the prematurely repatriated group were not blacklisted. “No complaints were filed against these workers and there were no reports of a breach of contract against them,” the ministry stated. It in the meantime the ministry reiterated its commitment to “resolving any issues that threaten the longevity of the programme”, adding that it “remains steadfast in protecting the rights of workers and maintaining the integrity of the programme, while expanding same”. The men, who had stayed off the job for a day in protest after their living quarters were flooded with waste water, landed in Jamaica on Tuesday, August 7, a day after the island ended its Independence celebrations. A member of the group alleged that the abrupt dismissal was “payback” for them blowing the whistle in June. The Observer was told that the men received the news of their departure while they were in the field on Friday, August 4. Labour Minister Pearnel Charles Jr, shortly after the matter was brought to his attention by the Observer, arranged for the face-to-face meeting with the workers, who felt they were victimised for going public with a video capturing their circumstances. The ministry, following the meeting with the dismissed men, had in a response to their complaints said preliminary investigations have revealed that, for the farm in issue, there has been notable fallout in production yield from the early cycle crops — asparagus and strawberry. It further said that based on changes in climatic conditions, spring frost impacted the crop production, causing a decline in projected yields. According to the ministry, “early cessation of employment is a common occurrence based on circumstances affecting crop production as is observed on several farms in Canada”. The ministry added that several farm workers who were party to the complaint by the Jamaicans about conditions on the farm in June are still on the job in Canada The video, which had been shared on several social media platforms and was also sent to the Observer at that time, showed overflowing toilets and bathroom facilities, and waterlogged flooring in the bunkhouse which features an open-plan layout. In one video, workers recorded a meeting between themselves and their handler who, in a tirade punctuated by expletives, accused them of deliberately pouring grease down the drains on more than one occasion to cause the unsightly flooding. The man, whose voice dominated the video, interrupted the workers’ attempts to deny any such activity. Following the media highlight by the farm workers, Charles ordered an immediate investigation into the living conditions and work environment of the farm workers from that location. Then in July the Ministry of Labour and Social Security said it would be identifying additional platforms through which farm workers can blow the whistle freely and voice their issues and complaints, without fearing backlash or victimisation from their handlers. In October last year a fact-finding delegation was sent to investigate conditions on farms across Canada, following the release of a letter written by Jamaican workers there and advocacy from injured migrant farm workers. That team, the findings of which were released in April this year, countered the complaints of the workers, stating that the majority of workers were pleased with the programme and disputed that the working conditions were akin to slavery.

SAVANNA-LA-MAR, Westmoreland — Even after two independent councillors of the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation joined the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) side of the floor on Thursday, embattled Mayor of Savanna-la-Mar Bertel Moore managed to hold onto his position. And he appears to have found an unlikely ally for future battles. Councillor Lawton McKenzie, who walked away from the People’s National Party (PNP) alongside Garfield James and Ian Myles in July to become independent representatives, did not cross the floor with them on Thursday. He has thrown his full support behind Moore and while he remains an independent for now, he has not written off a return to the PNP. McKenzie’s role is vital as the JLP now has six seats and the PNP has five. After Thursday’s stormy meeting, he told the Jamaica Observer that his leanings are generally towards the PNP on whose ticket he came to power in 2016. He was firm in his assertion that he will never join the JLP. “I have no intention of going anywhere,” McKenzie said when asked about a possible future with the ruling party. In fact, he said he had beseeched his former Comrades not to cross the floor. “I spoke to them and told them that I will not go any further, not even an inch further in the direction that they are going,” McKenzie told the Observer. His vote on matters that come before the corporation in the future, he said, will be determined by what is best for residents of the parish. McKenzie also made it clear that he will not be a party to any move to unseat Moore as mayor. “They cannot remove the mayor under the way they are doing it and I will be ensuring that [it does not happen],” he told the Observer. A no-confidence vote had been expected on Thursday but the meeting ended prematurely after a dust-up between Moore and James. James was on the floor and Moore told him to sit. James refused, arguing that Moore should apologise for earlier calling him crazy. With both men on their feet, Mayor Moore ended the meeting before the completion of a resolution of no-confidence against him which was being read ahead of being tabled. “[Moore] has deployed some cheap politics in his approach to prevent the council’s business from taking place,” James told the Observer after the meeting ended. He vowed that steps will be taken, in the coming days, to address what happened on Thursday. Whatever those plans, McKenzie is adamant that the corporation’s focus needs to be on serving the people who elected them all. “Everybody needs to go back in their divisions and work to try and get back another term,” he told the Observer. According to Councillor Myles, he and James will continue to serve their respective decisions with distinction as they did when they were members of the PNP. He said the JLP had welcomed them both with open arms. While he admitted that he had lost some support after walking away from the PNP, he claimed to have gained some as well. He told the Observer that he has the backing of most of the people in his Little London Division. “Persons have already been stating their position that wherever I go and whatever I do, that’s where they will be. It just shows the kind of leadership, a seriousness of purpose that has transparency and has no animosity but one that is genuine in nature for individuals. That is what I am about. Service above self,” stated Myles. This all began with Myles, James and McKenzie’s strident opposition to the PNP’s decision to allow Vice-President Ian Hayles to position himself as the constituency caretaker. In late July, Myles was voted in as deputy mayor of Savanna-la-Mar after the then independent councillors and the JLP joined forces to push that through. However, the PNP filed a court injunction and the issue remains unresolved.

TOLL GATE, Clarendon — Prime Minister Andrew Holness opened the May Pen to Williamsfield leg of Highway 2000 on Thursday morning, telling guests that he wants to fast-track construction of the country’s highway network as infrastructure development will attract investment, create jobs, and improve people’s lives. “This road is a step in improving the general quality of life for all Jamaicans; a step in improving the productivity of all Jamaicans,” Holness said, pointing out that the highway projects will make it easier for Jamaicans in rural areas to consider taking jobs in other areas as travel time will be reduced. “It also improves the response time of our emergency services, improves the delivery, and lowers the delivery cost of our agricultural output to market,” Holness added as he argued that infrastructure build-out improves people’s well-being. “Infrastructure is the foundation of any economy… Good infrastructure enables trade, drives businesses, connects workers to their jobs, and creates opportunities. Without good infrastructure it is difficult to attract investment [and] create jobs,” the prime minister said. “Our infrastructure programme doesn’t stop here. I want you to look out for the extension of the Williamsfield in Manchester to Hodges [near Black River] Highway. The ultimate plan is to extend the east-west highway to Negril and this highway will bypass Spur Tree [Hill], which is such a treacherous road, and it will be a four-lane highway with international standards for driving and safety,” he said. The May Pen to Williamsfield highway project — which will reduce travel time from Kingston to Mandeville and other points west — was originally scheduled for completion in October 2022. However, that timeline was changed to January 2023 and later March 2023. The highway, which motorists will use toll-free until the end of this year, includes the design and construction of approximately 23 kilometres of a four-lane, arterial, divided road on a new alignment and the upgrading of approximately five kilometres of the existing Melrose Hill Bypass to a four-lane, rural, arterial, divided road. Holness said he wants the timeline for the planning and construction of highways to be reduced. “As you can see, it is usually five years from plan to cutting the ribbon. I am going to try and shorten that period as much as we can, because as we build more infrastructure, especially taking on these large infrastructure, we are also building the management capacity for these infrastructure,” he said. “I am not expecting that it will take five years, but I want you to also appreciate that it is not just putting the tractor on the road and the excavator to tear down the hillside. A lot of work has to go into this,” added Holness. He explained that procurement and studies are essential to ensure the highways are built to regulatory standards. “We have to do the environmental [studies], we have to do the regulatory, we have to do the administrative, we have to do the procurement, we have to do the public investment assessment, just to ensure that every dollar that is allocated to the project is actually on the project,” said Holness. He pointed to the Montego Bay perimeter road now under construction, saying “… that is going to ease the traffic in Montego Bay and add speed and comfort to the travelling public in that area”. The US$274-million project is expected to be completed by the end of 2025, consisting of a 14.9-kilometre perimeter road to provide motorists with an alternative route around Montego Bay. The project also includes the rehabilitation of Barnett Street and West Green Avenue, a 10.5-kilometre Long Hill bypass road, and a comprehensive drainage study of Montego Bay. Reiterating the need to connect the east-west and north-south highways he said, as it now stands, motorists are forced to travel off one to access the other. To remedy that “there will be an interchange”. Additionally, he said that the north coast highway will be expanded by 30 kilometres to end near Trelawny. “We have started negotiations on that; [it] will significantly ease the traffic flow in that area,” he said. Holness also said he is preparing for the official opening of the southern coastal highway. “In a few weeks I will be opening the South Coast Highway Improvement Project Part B; the eastern section, Harbour View to Port Antonio. The people on that side of the island have endured, and I want to say to them I thank you for your patience,” said Holness. “When we say we are connecting Jamaica, we are making Jamaica a smaller place in terms of the time to travel, so you could potentially now realistically have your residence in Mandeville and work in Kingston if you choose,” he said.

Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton, speaking during the Ministry of Health’s quarterly press conference in the Corporate Area on Wednesday, said the ministry has identified from laboratory results, as of Monday September 11, a total of 39 positive cases. He said, of that number, 38 were identified as the Dengue Serotype 2, which has not been predominant here since 2010. The strain, in addition to fever, can cause two or more other symptoms of typical dengue infection and can be fatal. Dr Tufton said further fuelling the concerns is the fact that, of the 39 confirmed cases of the virus, a total of 20 belong in the five-to-14-year-old age grouping. “Because of the long period since we have identified strain two, the likelihood, particularly of the younger population being at a higher risk, is greater, and so it is also an additional cause for concern, the fact that this is the dominant strain,” the health minister stated. “Part of the call from the Ministry of Health and Wellness is to encourage parents to treat children who have a fever with paracetamol only and to avoid aspirin and aspirin-like medications such as ibuprofen and diclofenac,” the health minister said. In the meantime, Dr Tufton said data from the Ministry’s National Surveillance Unit shows that, as of Monday, September 11, there were 316 suspected, presumed and confirmed cases of the mosquito-borne disease. The health minister said this represents an almost fivefold increase when compared to the corresponding period in 2022 which had 65 cases. And the Health Ministry says that, while all parishes have had cases of dengue reported, confirmed cases were detected in Kingston and St Andrew, St Thomas, St Catherine, Westmoreland, Portland, and St Ann. It said from a population basis, the parishes of St Thomas, Kingston and St Andrew, and St Catherine have been flagged by health authorities as having the highest dengue activities in the island. According to Dr Tufton, $200 million has been allocated for the removal of bulky waste and drain-cleaning cross-country under an enhanced vector control programme which began in July to stem the possibility of an outbreak later this year. Furthermore, he said inspections have begun in schools and some 500 temporary vector control workers engaged so far and deployed to high-risk communities. He said the number will be increased if the need arises. With respect to fogging activities, he said 60 vehicles are available to facilitate the intensified activities. Jamaica last had a dengue outbreak in 2019. Up to November 2019 there had been 10,559 notifications of dengue cases with 6,114 of that number classified as suspected, presumed or confirmed. Forty-four deaths were reported. The Aedes agypti mosquito, which transmits the disease, is endemic to Jamaica. Dengue symptoms include fever, headache, muscle and joint pain, fatigue, nausea, and rash. In a small number of cases, the potentially deadly dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) may develop, resulting in internal bleeding, enlargement of the liver, and high fever.

MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Some motorists remain undecided on whether they will use the new toll road on the May Pen to Williamsfield leg of Highway 2000, set to be opened today, as they are concerned over the yet-to-be announced toll fees. The extension of the highway will significantly reduce travel time from Kingston to Mandeville and other points west, but some motorists are more concerned about the cost. “I want to hear how much the toll is going to be before I go on it. Anuh the time me a look pon, a the money. The highway good for when you have your private car like you are going to the airport, but for everyday travel if the toll is high it nuh mek sense; it would better to take the old road because this would be the third toll between Mandeville and Kingston,” a public passenger vehicle (PPV) operator told the Jamaica Observer on Tuesday. The PPV operator said he is eager to know what the toll fee for the May Pen to Williamsfield leg will be. “We don’t know how much money to go on it, so we have to wait and see. Suppose the toll is $300 a nuh nutten; me can absorb that. But if it is $800 we can’t afford that,” said the operator who requested anonymity. Another motorist, who identified himself as Roland, said although he welcomes the opening of the toll to bypass narrow winding roads in Porus he hopes the toll fee is manageable. “I wouldn’t miss having to go through Porus, but with gas prices climbing and the new toll opening, if the fee is exorbitant I will stick to the old road until I get to May Pen and join there,” he said. Another bus operator said with the new toll opening he wants to see a fare increase up from $550 from Mandeville to Kingston. “The fare from Mandeville to Kingston is low. You have to pay $990 at Vineyard and $350 at the first toll (May Pen) and the last part now (to Williamsfield),” he said in reference to his class two vehicle. “We need an increase in the fare that is the bottom line now as it stands,” added the operator. However, some motorists are focused on the reduced travel time, between May Pen and Williamsfield (near Mandeville) expected to be reduced to below 15 minutes, over the worry of what the toll fee will be. “The opening is overdue because I want to test it out and see how it stay and see the time it takes me to travel from Mandeville to Kingston,” said Jangles, a school bus driver. “I have a whole heap of school trips coming up to go into Kingston and with the congestion in Porus and traffic on the old road, time catch up on us, so we are glad for the highway,” he added. President of Transport Operators Development and Sustainable Services Egeton Newman, while optimistic about the highway opening, said it is important that there be a balance in PPV operators using the toll versus the old road. “The highway is a plus for transport operators, less wear and tear, less travel time for the commuting, so it is a plus to the sector,” he said. “I would not recommend that all the buses use the highway because our clients are not on the highway and need to get to their various places. We have to have a balance where some operators are allowed to use the highway while some are allowed to use the other route,” he said. He pointed out that interested PPV operators will have to apply to the Transport Authority to amend their road licences to utilise the toll road. “I would urge public passenger vehicle operators to ensure that their licences are amended to use the new toll road, because if they [use the toll] without going to the Transport Authority and make the amendment then they can be in serious trouble,” he said. “It is not going to be too easy for them to do, but still make the checks and see what will be the determination of the Transport Authority,” added Newman. Stephen Edwards, managing director at the National Road Operating & Constructing Company (NROCC) — which is responsible for overseeing the design, construction and maintenance of Jamaica’s highways — had told the Jamaica Observer recently that NROCC and TransJamaican Highway (TJH) were discussing the operations of the toll, including fees. “The details about the opening of the highway will be shared as soon as they are finalised,” he told the Observer via e-mail. “NROCC and TransJamaican Highway Limited are currently engaged in discussions. The details will be made public as soon as possible,” he added. Edwards was responding to questions posed by the Observer regarding the progress of discussions for an agreement between NROCC and TJH for the operation of the new leg. The May Pen to Williamsfield highway project was originally scheduled for completion in October 2022. This was then changed to January 2023 and later to March 2023. The highway project includes the design and construction of approximately 23 kilometres of a four-lane, arterial divided highway on a new alignment and the upgrading of approximately five kilometres of the existing Melrose Hill Bypass to a four-lane, rural, arterial divided highway.

Culture Minister Olivia “Babsy” Grange on Tuesday reprimanded Opposition Leader Mark Golding for his involvement in a slavery skit mounted at the People’s National Party (PNP) St Andrew Southern constituency conference on Sunday, describing it as disrespectful of the country’s ancestors and an affront to the entire nation. “Mr Golding’s reprehensible conduct has angered Jamaicans from all walks of life as his performance mirrored a very painful period when our ancestors were chained and pulled by chains about their necks, sometimes before cheering crowds at auctions where they were sold or as a mere act to fulfil the perverse pleasure of the oppressor,” Grange said in a statement. Golding and the PNP have been attracting flak for the skit which saw a male PNP supporter holding a padlocked chain around his neck and telling the party’s General Secretary Dr Dayton Campbell that he was being held in bondage by Prime Minister Andrew Holness. Campbell, prancing back and forth on the stage, is heard announcing that Golding has the key to release the man out of bondage, eliciting cheers from the crowd. Golding then appears on stage with a key, unlocks the padlock after which he and the chained man unwrap the chain and hold it aloft. Joining critics who have accused Golding and the PNP of making light of the country’s painful experience of slavery, Minister Grange asked, “Would the ancestors be pleased with Mark Golding’s behaviour? Would they cheer him? Or would they reject him and condemn his behaviour?” “I was horror-struck when I saw Mark Golding pull the man by the large chain around his neck while laughing and having a jolly good time,” she said. “My heart sank as I remembered the ancestors who were similarly treated as they endured hundreds of years of unspeakable oppression and brutality perpetrated by white colonial enslavers in a long war for our freedom today. All of us have been the beneficiaries of Emancipation given to us by the ancestors. We mustn’t take it lightly that today we live the life our African ancestors could only dream of,” Grange said. “How could the holder of such a high constitutional office as leader of the Opposition so disrespect our ancestors who gave their lives so that we could be here today?” she asked. “The slavery scene in which the Opposition leader positioned himself as the main character and chief arbiter on the issue of whether a black man is freed is deeply offensive and is an affront to the entire nation,” added Grange, who also has oversight of the National Council on Reparations. She said that at a time when Jamaicans are “demanding that enslavers set things right for the hundreds of years of chattel slavery of our African ancestors, we cannot accept this behaviour from the leader of the Opposition”. She accused Golding of making “a mockery of the sacrifice of our foreparents” and said he should, at minimum, “apologise and commit never to disrespect our people again”.

MANDEVILLE, Manchester — A Manchester father is hoping his prayers for help will be answered. Alwyn Hall says he needs more than $1 million to meet hip replacement surgery costs for his 25-year-old daughter, Janique, who was one of five people shot by gunmen as they robbed a Beryllium courier crew at Scotiabank in Mandeville on August 25, 2023. The attack occurred shortly after 5:00 pm outside the bank. Footage, which has gone viral, shows men armed with high-powered weapons escaping with two bags containing cash. Police have since charged Dorrell Watson, 25, otherwise called Stinger, who they said is one of the gunmen. Watson has been charged with robbery with aggravation, wounding with intent, shooting with intent, possession of a prohibited weapon, use of a prohibited weapon to commit a felony, and unauthorised possession of ammunition. He is to appear in the Manchester Parish Court today. The father told the Jamaica Observer on Tuesday that he was at home on the day of the robbery when he got a call from his daughter, who is also called “Miss Chin”, telling him that she had been hit by a bullet. “When she said ‘Daddy’, I said ‘Miss Chin, calm down’ and when she calmed down she said ‘Daddy, I’m down at the ATM at Scotia and I got shot’,” the distraught father related. “She was in the line to go into the ATM, she and her friends/co-workers, so she was there to draw her pay. She said when she was in the line a security guard came out of the bank and said ‘Gimme way,’ and by the time he said that she got shot in her hip,” added the father. He said his daughter was transferred to a Corporate Area hospital from Mandeville Regional Hospital last Friday. “Since then they [doctors] gave me a paper with a list of items and said I need to get them. The bone specialist who examined her told me that the surgery will be costly. When I went to Kingston and got the paperwork and checked, the cost was $1,012,000. If we don’t get the parts for the replacement hip then the operation cannot be done. I don’t have the money,” he said. “I got another paper from the hospital saying that I must pay $100,000 and any additional fee they will tell me about it. Right now I have the voucher, but I don’t pay it, because I don’t have it,” he added. He is calling on the authorities to intervene and assist. “Nobody from the security company or the bank come and say anything. Even the prime minister, I don’t hear him come out and say anything about what happened in Mandeville, but I saw [a report about] gunshots fired at Nationwide and they [politicians] are talking about that,” he said. “Big, big robbery happened in Mandeville and nobody come out and say anything. No one has reached out to our family,” added the father. “I don’t have a permanent job. I hustle for my children… I am a farmer and a painter and any hustling me gone on it same way, because I hustle to survive,” he explained. The shooting has revived unpleasant memories for the father whose son, Jovain Hall, was gunned down in Patrick Town, near May Day, at an event on a Friday almost six years ago. “It come in like seh me just salt, because my son died October 2017 from gunshot wound on a Friday and my daughter come get shot on the 25th of August on a Friday same way. After my daughter got shot on the Friday, the Saturday [August 26] would have been my son’s birthday, so everything just bungle up,” he said. “Friday is not my day. It rough, but a just life. I am like Job. I won’t give up and I am not going to question my God, so I will never ask God why. I am just bearing it,” added the father. When asked if he has sought any legal advice he said, “Not yet, but it is going to happen.” A GoFundMe account has been created to raise funds to cover some of the expenses. Individuals can make donations at https://www.gofundme.com/f/janique-hall-medical-fund-raising. Alwyn Hall can be contacted at 876-352-0591.

In just under 24 hours the 36 Haitians who arrived on a beach in Long Bay, Portland, last Saturday at 6:00 am were sent back to their country. But the fast pace at which the Government arranged for a Jamaica Defence Force Coast Guard vessel to leave the island with the refugees at 3:00 am on Sunday, has earned the ire of rights group Freedom Imaginaries, who have accused the Administration of sending the Haitians home “under the cover of darkness, without due process, in blatant disregard of United Nations (UN) advisories and international law”. According to Freedom Imaginaries founder Malene Alleyne, the Government’s decision to return the Haitians without due process could have been a deliberate effort to impede their access to legal support and information on their rights. Alleyne, an attorney, made the accusations in a letter to Prime Minister Andrew Holness and two other Government ministers. “We are also concerned that this decision could be indicative of an emerging policy of draconian responses to vulnerable Haitian migrants in an unlawful attempt to deter future flows of Haitians to Jamaica,” she said in the letter, a copy of which was seen by the Jamaica Observer. She also said it was “deeply disturbing that the Haitians were returned within 24 hours of arrival, without an opportunity to recover from their journey to Jamaica”. The Haitians who arrived on Saturday were the second group to have landed here, via boat, since July. The first batch of 37 are currently in the process of seeking asylum. It is reported that the Haitians who got here on Saturday were at sea for close to two weeks. In a statement issued on Monday morning, the Ministry of National Security said that, following the completion of immigration and security checks, the group was denied entry based on the vetting process. “The Government of Jamaica is in dialogue with the Government in Haiti and arrangements have been made with the relevant authorities in Haiti to facilitate the group’s safe return,” the statement read. Alleyne said that the Government’s claim that it sent the Haitians home because “it was found that there were members who had been previously removed from Jamaica for breaches of entry” raises concerns that they were not assessed individually. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), she said, explicitly prohibits penalisation for “illegal entry”. “This is a flagrant violation of Jamaica’s obligations under international law. The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol prohibit refoulement — the forced removal of people to a place where they may face risk of persecution, torture or other serious or irreparable harm. This entails a requirement that Haitian migrants must have access to efficient procedures that guarantee an individualised evaluation of protection needs,” she said. She further argued that the UNHCR had issued an advisory that calls upon states in the region to “suspend the forced return of Haitians to their country”, warning that Haitians who are returned to Haiti may face “life-threatening security and health risks, and further displacement inside the country.” Alleyne requested a meeting with the Government “to discuss international law standards for the protection of Haitian migrants to ensure that this situation is not repeated in the future.” For years Haiti has been mired in intertwining economic, security and political crises. The assassination of President Jovenel Moise in 2021 has dramatically worsened the situation, with gangs taking an increasingly strong hold. Last Friday, the UN reported that more than 2,400 people have been killed in Haiti since the start of 2023 amid rampant gang violence, including hundreds killed in lynchings by vigilante mobs. The toll came as clashes in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince last week left 30 residents dead and more than a dozen wounded. “Between January 1 and August 15 of this year, at least 2,439 people have been killed and a further 902 injured,” UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva. In addition, she said, “951 people have been kidnapped” during the same period.

DENBIGH, Clarendon — Unimpressed by a raft of suggestions to beef up security at May Pen Hospital after a nurse was viciously bludgeoned in the head, one of her colleagues has dismissed the measures as ineffective, a mere Band Aid placed over an open wound. Others have questioned the effectiveness of guards placed at two security posts through which the nurse’s attacker chased her before repeatedly beating her in the head with a rock. “We have been plagued by every type of abuse — physically, verbally psychologically — down here,” one nurse, who asked not to be identified by name, told the Jamaica Observer on Monday afternoon. “These quick fixes are not enough!” She wants permanent solutions put in place to ensure no one else endures the ordeal that left her colleague hospitalised with a fractured skull. In a statement Monday afternoon Southern Regional Health Authority (SRHA), which has oversight for May Pen Hospital, outlined changes that will be immediately implemented. These include security officers accompanying staff members working the night shift to their vehicles or point of pickup when they are leaving the compound. There will also be increased patrols by cops assigned to the police post at the hospital, as well as increased mobile patrols of the hospital compound by the Clarendon police. In addition, SRHA will be providing counselling to the injured nurse, her family, as well as other staff members. The release did not indicate if the proposed changes would be permanent or merely a short-term fix. The attack on the nurse came about 11:00 pm Sunday after she completed a 16-hour shift. She approached the hospital gates to get a taxi and was chased by a man who is believed to be mentally ill. Her colleagues are baffled that no guards came to her aid. “It was an elderly man who came to the assistance of the nurse, and he was attacked as well. He is now admitted in the A&E while the nurse is badly beaten. Her skull has been fractured and she is now hospitalised,” said one nurse who, along with her peers, briefly stayed off the job on Monday in protest. After a meeting with management they went back to work, though their concerns remain. Some of their fears are shared by Councillor Joel Williams (Denbigh Division, JLP) in whose division May Pen Hospital is located. “We happen to know that there are several issues happening in and around the compound and the security has failed to cauterise these incidences and to deal with them in a very effective way, and I have expressed that quietly. I have driven in here at nights and the security [guards] are asleep,” he told the Observer. He questioned the competence of the guards who were on duty at the time of the attack. “For that to have happened last night, I’m not saying you are trained for what you saw happening but at least you could have intervened. I heard the man had the nurse on the ground, beating her on the head with a stone, and for you to stay in your post without reacting is just inhumane,” said a visibly peeved Williams during a visit to the hospital on Monday. According to the councillor, the man accused of the attack on the nurse has been wreaking havoc in Bucknor, and the police transported him to the hospital. “Several houses were damaged in that area and this has been occurring over time with him. I’m sorry the way the police handled the matter too; they should have sought help for him instead of just taking him and leaving him here. I pray to God we don’t lose the nurse because I heard she is in serious condition. I am hoping this is an eye-opener and something like this will not happen again,” Williams told the Observer. He said he has been engaged in discussions to identify solutions for the way forward. “I would like to see a number of changes here and I have had discussions with a number of persons, including the CEO, the SMO [senior medical officer], and others. Some will take a little time but the first thing I would like to see corrected is the matter to do with the security,” the councillor said.

LESS than 24 hours after veteran parliamentarian Phillip Paulwell reported that his 10-month-old daughter and her mother had gone missing, his partner entered the fray denying that she had anything to do with the suspected abduction. Hours later a social media post claiming to be from the woman, who the police identified as 27-year-old Toshyna Patterson, said she and little Sarayah Paulwell were not missing. However, up to press time the police were still reporting the two as missing while Jamaica Observer sources claimed the post was fake. The saga surrounding Paulwell, the Member of Parliament for Kingston East and Port Royal, started to deepen on Sunday morning when his partner of several years, Leoda Bradshaw, issued a statement in which she denied having anything to do with the disappearance of Patterson and the baby girl. “The only interaction I have ever had with Ms Patterson is through a brief Facebook exchange,” said Bradshaw in the statement. “I have never spoken to her by phone nor have I made any arrangements to meet with her. Any such reports in social media are lies and will be passed on to my lawyer for action to be taken in the days ahead,” said Bradshaw who is an attorney based in the United States. “I have shared all information I have with the authorities and I hope their investigation will lead to the safe return of Ms Patterson and her baby girl,” added Bradshaw. She later told the Observer, in a telephone interview, that claims Patterson received a call from someone purporting to be her and saying they want to meet the baby should be investigated. “I have never spoken to this young lady, we have never met; how do you pick up yourself [and why] would you meet with a stranger you don’t know,” added Bradshaw as she noted that reports were that Patterson was picked up in a gold van by a male driver who was wearing a dark shades. “Why did you mention my name…my information was not public knowledge,” added Bradshaw. In outlining the sequence of events surrounding Paulwell, who sits on the Opposition benches in Parliament, Bradshaw said in May their eight-year-old daughter was sent sexually explicit photos, which were later followed by e-mail threats and extortion attempts. She said the matter was reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the Broward County Sheriff’s Department Internet Crimes Against Children in the US. They later reported the matter to the Jamaican authorities. “The threats against our child continued for months as the authorities investigated,” said Bradshaw. She added that on Sunday, September 3, an e-mail was sent out making threats that personal information on Paulwell would be released to the public. “They also made damning threats against our child,” said Bradshaw. According to Bradshaw, on Tuesday, September 5, she received an e-mail from an address, which is being withheld by the Observer, indicating that Patterson had a child with Paulwell. “I spoke to Phillip and he confirmed that he had a brief relationship with Ms Patterson and it is possible that the child was his, but he was not certain as a DNA test had not yet been done,” said Bradshaw. “This was the first time I was hearing about Ms Patterson and the child,” added Bradshaw. She said she sent Patterson a message on Facebook Messenger advising her that Paulwell had opened up to her about their involvement and the possibility that the child was his. “I advised her that Phillip and I would ensure the child is taken care of financially and a DNA test would be done to ensure that Phillip was the father of the child. “As can be seen from my exchanges with Ms Patterson, there was no anger but just a genuine wish to see that an innocent child is taken care of and not caught up between two parents no longer in a relationship,” said Bradshaw. She added: “I will continue to work with the local and US authorities to get to the bottom of the threats against my family, in particular our young daughter. “I will continue to pray for the safe return of Ms Patterson and her baby and ask anyone with information to contact the police.”

THREE senior attorneys have argued that inflammatory statements about a person or entity which precede an adverse act against them are not enough to stand up as evidence in court, and caution should be taken in seeking to link the two. The views of the three king’s counsel were sought by the Jamaica Observer on Sunday, two days after a gun attack on Nationwide News Network raised questions as to whether that act was fuelled by incendiary remarks made against the station by People’s National Party (PNP) General Secretary Dr Dayton Campbell on September 3, 2023. Addressing the party’s St Andrew East Central constituency conference, Campbell accused Nationwide of being an “incubator for the Jamaica Labour Party” and named a number of former employees of the station who are now working in Government services. Campbell’s comments were condemned by the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ) which said that such remarks, coming from a prominent political figure, have the potential to place Nationwide journalists at risk of attacks by political activists and party supporters. “By putting journalists in harm’s way Dr Campbell’s comments are a blatant attack on press freedom and represent a grave escalation of assaults on the principles of a free and independent press — a fundamental pillar of any democratic society,” PAJ President Milton Walker said. The Media Association of Jamaica and the Government have also condemned the comments, which were further placed under the spotlight when a gunman on a motorcycle fired shots from the gate at Nationwide into the media house’s parking lot last Friday afternoon. Two vehicles in the parking lot, one of them belonging to a staff member, were hit by bullets. No one was injured, however. Speaking during the station’s evening news and current affairs programme Nationwide@5 on Friday evening, Nationwide CEO Cliff Hughes said he had no evidence to link the attack on his station with Campbell’s comments. However, he pointed to a concern he had expressed that the PNP general secretary’s comments had the potential to place Nationwide staff in danger. On Sunday, defence attorney Peter Champagnie said that if criticism is made of an entity or individual and then subsequently something adverse happens to that entity or individual, this is “not enough from an evidentiary point in law to say that there is a nexus between the two”. “Indeed, accusations of political bias of an entity would fall within that person’s right to exercise his or her constitutional right to free speech,” he said. Champagnie further pointed out that the offence of incitement, for example, requires a specific intent and that “the threshold to get this is high”. “Statements made on the political hustings, in some instances, are inflammatory, however they hardly ever [if at all] rise to the level of being actionable within the realm of the criminal law. Great caution, therefore, should be exercised in wanting to equate such statements with any criminal offence such as incitement,” he said. “Note should also be taken of the provisions of Section 13(3)b and c of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms under our constitution. These provisions guarantee the right to freedom of thought, observance of political doctrine, and free speech. Bearing all of these factors in mind, the appropriate commentary should be the insistence on political maturity from our politicians who make statements which fall short of any inspirational message or result in this kind of discussion now before us,” he said. Concurring with Champagnie, another senior attorney (who opted not to be named) contended that there are no matters that can be resolved in court without credible evidence to support the allegations. Yet another prominent senior attorney pointed out that as “harsh and imprudent” as Dr Campbell’s comments were, “I don’t think he can be liable for what the gunman did, certainly not in a legal sense. “His statement was intended to generate a political impact, but not violence. We are not even sure what motivated the shooting — exuberant PNP activist or Jamaica Labour Party activist trying to sink Campbell further? We don’t have all the facts yet,” said the attorney who also declined to be identified.

MALIKE Kellier thought his year as a Chevening scholar at University College of London (UCL) could not get any better so when he was chosen valedictorian of his graduating class he was absolutely thrilled. It was like icing on a cake, he said, even as he shared that he felt humbled he had been given the “privilege” to deliver a speech on behalf of the graduating class during Friday’s ceremony. “I had to make sure to not only share the stories of what our experience was… because we also had to be contending with strikes — the UK was undergoing teacher strikes, train strikes, doctor strikes, so there were so many challenges to overcome at the same time,” said Kellier who, during his year at the university, was elected president of the student body. “As the student leader I had to keep fostering that sense of community amongst my student body to help them along the way and make sure that we could all cross the finish line. Of course, as a proud Jamaican I had to make sure that in delivering my valedictorian address I showed [patriotism] by speaking about Jamaica,” he said. He told the Jamaica Observer that his valedictory address would not have been complete without a quote from Jamaica’s first National Hero Marcus Garvey: “There is no force like success.” “Many people came to me after the ceremony to say that they were just so inspired by that quotation,” said Kellier. “Brand Jamaica was on show today, and a young black man from that little island stood on the stage of a nearly 200-year-old school and rubbed shoulders with other great people. It was just a blessing and I am so thankful,” he added. Kellier, an assistant director of public prosecutions, was named one of the 16 Chevening Scholarship recipients for 2022. The fully funded scholarship took the Cornwall College old boy to the United Kingdom to pursue a master’s in human rights law. The year abroad, he said, brought about many challenges and life-changing experiences. “I couldn’t imagine in my wildest dreams the many opportunities I [would] have received while here in the UK. It has been a year full of excitement but also challenges, so I don’t want it to seem that studying, especially a Master of Law degree, was by any means any easy feat,” said Kellier. A year outside of the Caribbean resulted in him missing home, but he found his footing in the busy city of London. “I was able to find my community. I had my community of friends, other Chevening scholars — whether they were doing my programme or not — especially Chevening scholars from the Caribbean, who were my support system,” Kellier told the Sunday Observer. Known for his passion for youth leadership, Kellier, a 2021 recipient of the Prime Minister’s National Youth Award for Excellence in the category of National Leadership, embarked on his one-year journey with great zeal. “I maximised the opportunity in my Chevening year as I landed here in September 2022; and as I am reflecting now at the end, I did more than enough to give myself a full and rewarding experience in London. I was also the student body president at the University College of London, and that was a beautiful experience for me to be able to network…and also learn from the experiences of other people,” Kellier said on Friday after his graduation ceremony. His family, he said, has been experiencing tremendous joy from his achievement. “They are just so humbled. They have been supportive of me in all my endeavours, from as early as my formative years at prep school. I remember my mom, before I landed properly in the UK last September she wanted to know my graduation date because she had to rally up the tribe so that they could plan appropriately for the trip,” he said. “They are all just beaming with pride to know that I have finished successfully. My sister, my father, my mommy, and my aunts are here supporting me. Many of my friends and colleagues were tuned in online to watch,” Kellier said. While encouraging more young, talented Jamaicans to utilise the Chevening programme, Kellier stated that there is a lot to experience during a year away from home. He noted that those chosen for the scholarship are not only allowed to study but experience new cultures at the same time. “It’s important, I think, for anyone going to study in any foreign country to go out there and explore,” he said. While he prepares to pack up and head back to home soil, Kellier expressed gratitude for the opportunity to shine on unfamiliar ground. “I have to thank the British high commissioner and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for this opportunity,” he said. “UCL is a very dynamic and diverse university; you have people from all walks of life and different parts of the globe so to learn from and lead such a very distinguished and diverse group was an honour,” Kellier stated.

Member of Parliament (MP) for Kingston Eastern and Port Royal Phillip Paulwell has confirmed reports reaching the Jamaica Observer that his 10-month-old child and her mother have been missing since Saturday. Paulwell said the two, whose names are being withheld by the Sunday Observer, were seemingly abducted from their St Andrew home and have not been seen or heard from since. “This is scary and comes at a time when I have been threatened by scammers who have hacked my phone and banking data and are demanding money to release them,” said Paulwell. “I have made it clear that I will not give in to extortionists, but this is a serious and dangerous development. The matter has been reported to the police and I have given a full statement. I have also increased my security measures,” he said. “I am worried sick over their safety and hope the police, who have launched a high-level investigation, will find the abductors and get them both home safe and sound,” added Paulwell, who sits on the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) benches in Parliament, Last week Paulwell told the Observer that he found out that his bank accounts had been hacked and a substantial amount withdrawn after he attempted to make a withdrawal at a local financial institution. He said checks with other financial institutions at which he holds accounts showed that attempts had also been made to hack them. Paulwell was later contacted and told that his phone had been cloned and they had access to his e-mail, pictures, personal and professional messages. He said the extortionist threatened to make public the information, including correspondence with his clients, unless he deposited US$150,000 to an account which was provided. According to Paulwell, the extortion demands have been reported to local and international investigators who have launched a probe. He told the Observer that the international investigators traced the account to which he was asked to pay the money to the United Kingdom and shut it down with some US$600,000. The veteran MP said he refused to pay and last Sunday received reports from political and personal colleagues that they had been sent e-mail with images which were on his phone. Paulwell said, despite the threats, he has no intention giving in to the demands from the scammers. Editor’s note: The Jamaica Observer had previously reported that the extortionists demanded US$50,000. That should have been US$150,000.

FINANCE Minister Dr Nigel Clarke says the British Government has pumped just under $10 million into the investigation of activities at fraud-hit Stocks and Securities Limited. Dr Clarke made the revelation on Saturday to the Jamaica Observer after questions were raised about the cost of the probe to the country. “The Government of the United Kingdom, through the British High Commission in Jamaica, has provided grant support to the Financial Investigations Division (FID) in the amount of £50,000 (just under $10 million), to assist in the investigation into the alleged fraud at Stocks and Securities Limited,” Dr Clarke said in an e-mail response. His revelation came two days after Opposition spokesman on finance Julian Robinson asked him to state specifically: 1) the cost to the Government for engaging the UK forensic auditing firm Kroll Associates 2) the cost to the Government for engaging the receiver/manager 3) any other expenditures being paid for by the Government in pursuit of the investigations. “Full transparency,” Robinson argued, “requires the disclosure of expenditures not just by the Ministry of Finance, but by both the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Investigations Division, who are funded by the public purse.” He said that each day more information emerges on the extent of the role being played by the Government and its agencies in footing the bill for the investigations. As such, “the Government needs to be completely transparent and come clean with the public about these expenditures”, Robinson said. In January this year when the fraud was uncovered, Clarke had announced the Government’s intention to engage international forensic auditors as well as the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation to help unravel the fraud which spanned more than a decade. Jamaican sprint icon Usain Bolt is among 40 of SSL’s clients whose accounts have been raided in the fraud. In March this year Clarke signed an agreement with Kroll Associates UK under which the company will assist local law enforcement agencies with their probe of the more than $3-billion fraud at SSL. “Kroll will bring to the table technology and expertise that will enable the investigators to unravel every aspect of this fraud,” Dr Clarke said in a short ceremony at his office in Kingston. He pointed out that Kroll Associates is “a subsidiary of Kroll International, a firm known for their forensic auditing experience and expertise”. A former wealth advisor at the firm, Jean-Ann Panton, has confessed to stealing from the clients and has been charged with three counts of larceny as a servant, five counts of forgery, five counts of uttering forged documents, three counts of engaging in transactions involving criminal property, and three counts of breaching the Cybercrimes Act. Two weeks ago the FID said it expects to make more arrests in relation to the fraud probe as the skulduggery at the securities dealer is much bigger than previously thought and has affected almost twice as many people as stated earlier. Selvin Hay, director general of the FID, said the investigation is progressing with the application of the highest professional standards. “It has taken on new dimensions which are wider than first expected,” Hay was quoted as saying in the release. “What is being uncovered is that there are approximately 70 affected accounts — this is significantly more than the just-over 40 affected accounts at the initial phase. The investigation has also identified other fraudulent schemes at SSL which has resulted in the misappropriation and/or loss of numerous investors’ funds amounting to over US$10 million ($1.5 billion).” On Saturday, Clarke expressed gratitude to the British Government for its support. “The Ministry of Finance and the Public Service is grateful to the British High Commission for this meaningful support, which ultimately comes from British taxpayers,” he said. “It is instructive that British taxpayers are willing to assist in building Jamaica’s financial crime investigative capacity and in supporting Jamaican authorities in their financial crime investigations. It also demonstrates the confidence of the UK in Jamaica’s FID,” Clarke added. Pointing out that Jamaica is the ultimate beneficiary of successful investigations into alleged financial crime here, Clarke said, “Successful investigations increase public trust, strengthen our financial system, and serve as a deterrent to other potential wrongdoers. However, these kinds of investigations are expensive, especially for fraud of the magnitude and duration of what allegedly occurred at SSL.” Added Clarke: “Highly specialised resources have to be retained and international collaboration has to be sustained. Though we are not using tax revenues to fund the extraordinary costs of the SSL investigation, as a country we will need to be prepared to make the necessary fiscal allocations for investigations of this kind if we are interested in achieving a Jamaica governed by the rule of law. “Much of the cynicism may stem from the relative impunity that has existed in Jamaica in relation to alleged financial sector shenanigans over several decades. Many people just don’t believe, therefore, that anything will come of this SSL saga, and so the view is held that money spent is money wasted. If so, this would be an unhealthy disposition in our society that must be addressed through results.” He said the policy he had articulated in January to leave no stone unturned, follow the evidence where it leads, and seek international help is clear. “That is what investigators have operationalised. This is the approach that is required if we indeed want this time to be different,” the finance minister said.

Nationwide News Network (NNN) CEO Cliff Hughes remained fearless on Friday, declaring that he and his staff will not be unnerved by a mid-afternoon gun attack on the station that has been widely condemned as an assault on press freedom. “We are not going to be intimidated, we are not going to be distracted from our job. No lunatic will stop us. They will not break us. This will deepen and strengthen our resolve. You will not succeed,” the veteran journalist Hughes declared during the station’s evening news and current affairs programme Nationwide@5. Hughes, who was not at the station when a gunman on a motorcycle fired shots from the gate into the parking lot about 4:30 pm, rushed to the Bradley Avenue property in St Andrew immediately on receiving word of the attack. He told the Jamaica Observer that he was not due at work, but given the assault he had to get to the station to comfort his staff and present the evening programme. On air, Hughes and Deputy Executive Editor George Davis told listeners that the perpetrator, who was wearing a yellow helmet, pulled up at the gate and sat on the motorcycle for some time before pulling a gun and opening fire. Two vehicles in the parking lot, one of them belonging to a staff member, were hit by bullets. Davis was also resolute, declaring that the team remains steadfast and will continue to produce and air news as well as the station’s various programmes. Hughes noted that the attack came on the same day when the leadership of the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) were on the front page of The Gleaner newspaper declaring support for comments made by the party’s General Secretary Dr Dayton Campbell against Nationwide at the party’s St Andrew East Central constituency conference on September 3, 2023. In that address Campbell accused Nationwide of being an “incubator for the Jamaica Labour Party” and went on to name a number of former employees of the station who are now working in Government. The comments were condemned by the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ) which said that such remarks, coming from a prominent political figure, have the potential to place Nationwide journalists at risk of attacks by political activists and party supporters. “By putting journalists in harm’s way, Dr Campbell’s comments are a blatant attack on press freedom and represent a grave escalation of assaults on the principles of a free and independent press… a fundamental pillar of any democratic society,” PAJ President Milton Walker said. However, in Friday’s Gleaner PNP President Mark Golding chided the PAJ, saying he was disappointed by the association’s statement and its request for Campbell to retract his remarks. On Friday evening Hughes said he had no evidence to link the attack on his station with Campbell’s comments. However, he pointed to a concern he had expressed that the PNP general secretary’s comments had the potential to place Nationwide staff in danger. Friday’s gun attack was condemned by the PAJ which described it as “reprehensible and cowardly”. “This vile act constitutes an unprecedented assault on a news organisation and represents a grave attack on the fundamental principles of press freedom that all Jamaicans hold dear,” Walker said. He said the PAJ stands unwaveringly in solidarity with Nationwide and the broader journalism community in Jamaica during this challenging time, adding, “We firmly believe that an independent and fearless press is the cornerstone of any democratic society. An attack on one news organisation is an attack on the collective freedom of the press, and it is an affront to the values of democracy and transparency.” Walker called on the police to swiftly investigate the incident, apprehend the perpetrators, and ensure that justice is served. He also urged all Jamaicans to unite in condemning this act of violence against the press. “We must stand together to protect and uphold the principles of press freedom, democracy, and the right of all citizens to access accurate and unbiased information,” Walker said, adding that the PAJ maintains that attacks on the media will not deter journalists from their duty to inform the public and ensure that the truth prevails. Meanwhile, the Media Association Jamaica (MAJ) expressed shock, disgust and disappointment at the attack on the station. “Regardless of motivation, the potential intimidatory effect on journalists carrying out their work on behalf of the public is a sad reality for this nation to deal with. Media houses stand strong and resolute with Nationwide and its employees in the face of intimidation, defending our right to transparency and unfettered access to report on issues of national importance. We call on the nation to do the same. Freedom of the press has today fallen off the knife’s edge upon which it has been precariously perched. Today will forever be etched as a dark day for journalism in Jamaica,” the MAJ said in a statement. “We urge the authorities to investigate promptly with a view to bring those responsible to justice. We ask Jamaicans to decide today which Jamaica they want to live in. We must do better,” the MAJ said. The Government also condemned the attack, describing it as “abhorrent” and saying that it “must never be seen in Jamaica again”. “The Government restates its commitment and support to a free press which should not be intimidated in any way,” information minister Robert Morgan said.

With the abduction and murder of eight-year-old Gabrielle Rowe still fresh in the minds of Jamaicans, principal of St Andrew Preparatory School Dr Carol Blanchard says that institution will be introducing stakeholder identification cards to complement its suite of safety measures. Rowe, a student of Braeton Primary School, was taken from her St Catherine-based school on June 8 by a then unidentified woman and transported to Roosevelt Avenue, St Andrew, where her throat was slashed and she was thrown from a vehicle. She was found and taken to the Bustamante Hospital for Children, where she died a day later. The woman is now in police custody and was pointed out during an identification parade as the individual who took the child from the school’s premises. “We will be doing a stakeholders ID and we will communicate that to you at a later date so you can come in to do your photographs,” Blanchard told a cohort of parents attending a recent orientation at St Andrew Preparatory in the Corporate Area. She, however, did not divulge details of the security features the card will carry. Blanchard said such measures have become increasingly necessary given the present climate in the country in which children are no longer viewed as a protected species by individuals bent on doing evil. Dr Blanchard said the card will be used alongside security camera coverage and an existing contact sheet which all guardians are required to complete and return to the school, which states explicitly the name and contact of two individuals who are authorised to collect a child in the event the main parent cannot do so. The school must, however, be notified about the change in arrangement. Addressing the issue of the use of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras, Dr Blanchard said while the school embraced the use of cameras as a surveillance measure, it was not to be seen as the endgame. “We do have cameras on plant and at a later date, as part of our discussion, given what is happening in the entire island with respect to safety, we want to be able to keep a close tab, but I want to say to every parent that some things are a false sense of security, including cameras, because very often what your camera does is capture what has been done, so the best thing to do is to be very proactive in our actions,” she noted. “The reason you are given a detailed contact sheet is to ensure that just in case you are unable to pick up your child someone from your village, your network is identified and not just identified on paper but also get the opportunity to come to school to know the teachers and persons on the ground. “I am not saying cameras are not important. What is important to me as a principal is to ensure that the other things we are putting in place are taken seriously. Because I do believe that when it is that you know the persons who are coming to pick up the children, when you have that relationship with the parent and you cover that with persons who automate on the compound, that is a big part of security,” Dr Blanchard stated. “Our cameras can cover those persons who are coming in and can help with investigations but I also want us to focus a lot on the things that we can prevent and so ensuring that you have the persons who are coming in on our data form actually meet with our faculty is also a very important part in security arrangements for the school,” she added. In June this year, following the murder of Rowe, Education Minister Fayval Williams said CCTV cameras are to be installed at the entrances of all primary schools. She said this was part of the ministry’s efforts to strengthen safety and security measures at these institutions. “We’ve generally reserved CCTVs, or safety cameras, for high schools, especially those in vulnerable areas. But having seen what has happened here at this very quiet primary and infant school, we have to begin to increase the safety and security… so, at the very least, when there is a situation, we can at least get some footage,” Williams maintained. Commanding officer for the St Catherine South Police Division Senior Superintendent of Police Christopher Phillips recommended that the School Safety and Security Policy, as it relates to all institutions, be updated so that it “speaks to the modern reality and that which creates standard procedures on school safety and security”. In late August, president of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) Leighton Johnson called for, among other things, CCTV cameras in all schools, one police officer assigned to each institution, and secured compounds to protect students. Minister Williams subsequently said CCTV cameras will be installed at 15 more schools for the new school year. She said it would cost $1.5 billion to install surveillance cameras in all primary schools islandwide.

WAKING up after a very long surgery at Shriners Hospital for Children in Texas in the United States, just in time to give her stepmother Julian Mendez a birthday gift, was a big sign that 17-year-old burn victim Alecia King is pulling through. King was asleep at home in Linstead, St Catherine, early in the morning on August 24 when her ex-boyfriend allegedly doused her with flammable liquid then set her on fire. She sustained life-threatening burns and was rushed to a local hospital, but despite efforts to keep her stable, she required advanced treatment and care. Her burns were so severe that plans were made between her family and the Sanmerna Foundation to fly Alecia to Shriners in the US by air ambulance. Just under a week later, on August 29, she was airlifted from Jamaica, in serious condition, accompanied by her stepmother, who is there to support her as she undergoes a series of life-saving surgeries. An elated Mendez, who was grateful that even in the state that Alecia is in, she could still manage to organise the purchase of a gift. “We were bonding and crying together. I am so grateful to everyone who has helped Alecia, especially the Sanmerna Foundation. I am happy,” a thankful Mendez said on Thursday. Stephen Josephs, projects manager of the Sanmerna Foundation, who visited Alecia in hospital and checked in with doctors for updates regularly, said that although the teen is showing positive signs on her road to recovery, she has been having good and bad days since being admitted to hospital on August 24. “The first time I saw [her] in hospital in the US was on Tuesday. She asked me to get something for her stepmother’s birthday. She was really grateful to God for sparing her life and bringing her thus far. She said that her faith is strong and that God is with her. She wants everybody to continue praying for her. She said with God in the midst, she knows she will make it. “On Wednesday, she was in surgery very long and came out just in time to celebrate her stepmother’s birthday. The Shriners staff is doing very good. A Jamaican practical nurse is a part of the team at Shriners. Alecia is at the largest burn unit at any Shriners Hospital in the US,” Josephs said. Alecia’s ex-boyfriend, who is accused of setting her on fire while she slept, is still at large and Josephs wants Jamaicans to cooperate with the police and help them find him. “Certainly it was a heinous crime. Jamaica should rally around to support the police and help in the capture of the person responsible for this crime. No stones must be left unturned. He must get his day in court,” Josephs said.

LITTLE LONDON, Westmoreland — Ground is expected to be broken for the construction of the long-awaited Westmoreland Police Divisional Headquarters in this parish by the end of the year. National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang said he has given instructions for the headquarters to be relocated from Great George Street in Savanna-la-Mar to Llandilo in the parish. However, the minister said the process was delayed by challenges with the process put in place to minimise corruption. “The Government agreed and finance was provided, but there has been a tedious procurement process and we won’t break ground until maybe December of this year,” the minister stated following a tour of the proposed site on Thursday. In February, Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke told the House of Representatives that the project had been allocated $465 million in the 2023/2024 Estimates of Expenditure. According to Dr Chang the old building now on Great George Street in the town will be “refurbished to accommodate the Savanna-la-Mar City Police Station.” On Thursday, the minister also toured the Frome and Little London stations, which are currently under construction in the parish. These projects have also had their share of delays for various reasons, but the Frome facility is now expected to be occupied by July, while November of next year is said to be the opening date for the Little London station. Ground was broken for the Little London station in April of last year, with the ground-breaking for Frome following in September of that same year. Both projects, which are funded by the National Housing Trust (NHT), are expected to cost $175 million each. Minister Chang said the stations are being monitored for completion because they are well needed. “Westmoreland is a parish that has seen an increase in criminal activities, and we had to deploy more personnel. The quality of the station that existed there for many years was extremely poor and way below standards for police officers,” he stated. “We are investing in building an appropriate infrastructure for the police in Westmoreland and across Jamaica,” he added. Member of Parliament for Westmoreland Western Morland Wilson (Jamaica Labour Party) welcomed the work being done on the Little London station in his constituency, which had two murders hours within each other a few days ago. “I want to say thanks for the tour by the deputy prime minister and National Security Minister [Dr Chang], along with the Commissioner of Police [Major General Antony Anderson], NHT, and their teams. The tour is timely, as we have seen two high-profile incidents — which caught national attention — in the Little London area,” stated Wilson. He was referring to the gun slaying of 39-year-old Lativa Helps at her businessplace on Monday and the robbery of a supermarket. An elderly woman was injured in the second incident. Wilson, who is anticipating the completion of the station within the target date, said the new facility will result in better policing, better communities, and a better Jamaica.

The local tourism sector is champing at the bit days before the start of Jamaica Product Exchange (Japex), the premier trade fair staged by the industry that last year earned the country US$3.64 billion. “This week the excitement around Japex 2023 is palpable,” Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) President Robin Russell told journalists at a press launch on Thursday at The Courtleigh Hotel and Suites in St Andrew. “It is a fact that worldwide there have been consolidations among tour operators and travel agencies, with many of these representing several buyer companies, but that has not reduced or diminished the enthusiasm for Japex as the premier Caribbean marketplace,” he said, adding that the top buyers will be at the event scheduled for September 11 to 13 in Montego Bay. Russell said that as of yesterday [Wednesday] 102 buyer delegates, 132 supplier delegates, and two global media companies have registered for the trade show which the JHTA boldly declares on its website “is back, and we are ready to GO in person!” He said the representatives will come from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, France, India, Italy, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Mexico, Spain, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, and Uruguay. Japex will return to full face-to-face interaction since 2019, as the trade fair was held in a virtual format in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021 it was set to be held in November as a hybrid in-person/virtual event but joint hosts, the JHTA and Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB), rescheduled it to early 2022. The Montego Bay Convention Centre in St James will be the main venue for this year’s event during which the island will be showcased via tours, video presentations, destination updates, receptions and parties. “We’re looking at new markets that are going to come into the mix – Eastern Europe is coming in droves [with] more than 17 travel agents, tour operators and media; South America is coming in droves, and in addition to that there is a team from Latin America which is a powerful group of young people… pulling together investment potential and partners from Latin America,” Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett said at the press launch. Latin America, he said, has a minimum of 600 million people with an estimated $4 trillion market. He stressed that Japex 23 is more than just a trade show; it is a symbol of Jamaica’s recovery and “is an opportunity for us to showcase our innovation, or commitment to sustainability, and our dedication to preserving our natural treasures for generations to come”. “Japex is a convergence of talents, ideas, and aspirations. It’s where industry professionals, business leaders, travel enthusiasts and creative minds come together to forge connections, share insight, and unveil the very best that Jamaica has to offer,” he said. Bartlett noted that this year’s event holds even more significance as it follows a period of unparalleled challenges for the global travel and tourism industry caused by the pandemic. “The pandemic tested our collective resolve, but it also reinforced our resilience. Through the darkest days we remained steadfast in our commitment to preserving the unique Jamaican experience and ensuring the safety and well-being of our visitors,” he said. Japex planning chair, Nicola Madden-Greig said the event will provide delegates with a destination update, as well as several educational sessions and seminars with a focus on health and wellness, and on the diaspora market. “We will also have a session on digital marketing, which will be presented by the Jamaica Tourist Board, as well as a session that is going to be talking about artificial intelligence (AI) and how do we implement strategies in terms of AI in the business of tourism and ensuring that we use that to our advantage,” she said, noting that these sessions will be held at the Montego Bay Convention Centre on Monday. She noted that on Monday evening there will be a welcome reception and opening ceremony which, for the first time, will not be held at the convention centre but at Chukka Ocean Outpost in Montego Bay. “We felt it was important at this stage to change it up a little bit for Japex,” Madden-Greig explained. She noted that on Tuesday and Wednesday there will be full sessions or appointment scheduling with international buyers. She said as well that there is a separate media itinerary, adding that the international media will be visiting various areas across the island. “On Wednesday afternoon we have another change of our agenda where we will be bringing in travel agents from Canada, from the UK, Europe, from the Caribbean, from the US market, and they will be doing an immersive programme across Jamaica, visiting the resort areas and seeing what’s new,” Madden-Greig said. The closing ceremony will be held on Wednesday at Sandals Montego Bay under the theme ‘Reggae Experience’. Japex provides a platform for Jamaica’s tourism partners and stakeholders to engage in prearranged business meetings with international buyers. It also gives participants the opportunity to discover what is new in Jamaica, strengthen business contacts, and network to establish new connections. Hotels and resorts, transportation providers, tours and attractions all mount exhibitions at the event, which attracts travel agents, wholesalers, and tour operators, as well as leading suppliers in the local tourism industry.

Twelve days after a gun attack on a security team outside Scotiabank in Mandeville, Manchester by marauding criminals, uncertainty hangs over the future of a 38-year-old father of three who was shot in the head, ironically while driving past a guardhouse which he had constructed in the area. To his aching family that structure is now a permanent monument of his near brush with death. “That guardhouse right there, my son built it, and it was right there that my son almost died,” his mother told the Jamaica Observer in an emotional interview on Tuesday. She said her grandson and daughter-in-law, who were in the vehicle when the projectile came crashing through the windscreen, were the true heroes on Friday, August 25, the day of the frightening attack. “The bullet came through the front windscreen and when he got hit he fell between the two front seats. He told my grandson, ‘Stay down, son,’ and my grandson held his father’s head in his lap. He put his shirt over his father’s head and said, ‘Daddy, you are not going to die.’ They were there for a while until they didn’t hear any gunshots. My son was in the passenger seat and my daughter-in-law was driving and she drove on the sidewalk with my son to the Mandeville Regional Hospital,” the woman who has no other children told the Observer. The man, described as a multi-skilled construction worker, electrician and tiler, is now laid up in a Corporate Area hospital, partially paralysed with the bullet, which surgeons have been unable to remove, still lodged in his head. “My whole life has been shattered. If somebody cut me now, I don’t think I can feel it. If somebody hit me I can’t feel it; my body is still numb. A part of me is angry, but I pray to God and ask Him to take away the anger from me. I feel that I forgive the persons who did this to my son. He is my only child. His sons are traumatised; the eldest doesn’t want to leave his room, he just locks himself in his room,” the mother told the Observer through tears. “In one week I lost 15 pounds. My life has changed. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t explain it. It is very hard, it is taking a toll on the family, but we have to just keep fighting and pushing and try to go the extra mile for my son,” she said further. The woman — who said she has been alternating visits with her son’s common-law wife as only one individual is allowed to visit each time — shared that her son, who is able to speak, has found new faith in God since the incident. “I spoke to him this morning; I prayed with him, I read the Bible, and we talked. Yesterday [Monday] he called me very early and he said ‘Mommy, can you read me a passage of scripture, please?’ and he said, ‘Mommy, I am coming out of this hospital and I am going to gain souls for God,’ and I said, ‘That’s good, son’. And he said, ‘Mommy, I accepted God because only God can carry me through this’,” she told the Observer. She said on the day of the violent attack she was on her farm. She fell ill and was gripped with a sense of foreboding. “I wasn’t feeling well. It was as if I knew something was going to happen, but I didn’t know what it was. I felt like something hit me between my shoulder blade and my neck. I was alone at the time, and I sat on a bucket, and for about 15 minutes it was as if I wasn’t there, and then when I came back to, I said, ‘God, what is happening?’ and when I said that my husband appeared and he said ‘Why did you say that?’” she related. When she indicated how she felt he advised that they should call it a day and head home. However, when they got home the feeling persisted. “I looked about dinner, but I could not eat. I made some tea and drank about half when I got a phone call,” she recalled. Her screams alerted the rest of the small family to the tragedy. “I felt like my whole body got numb. My husband called a taxi and we went to the hospital. When we went there I saw my grandson, his shirt was soaked in his father’s blood. I was screaming and telling people just let me see my child, he is my only child, and they said he went to Kingston,” she recalled. She said but for a woman who told her that her son was still at that hospital she would have ordered the taxi driver to head for Kingston. “[Later], a doctor came and said, ‘Where is the mother?’ and she pulled me into a room. She said ‘Your son is still talking, which is good.’ After a while they took me to the room where he was. It was as if my feet were going under. He said, ‘Mommy, I love you.’ He called for his stepfather, who he calls dad, and he said, ‘Daddy, I love you,’ and they talked for a while and then he called for his oldest son and he said ‘Remember now, you are the biggest one, you have to take care of the two smallest ones and remember I love you’,” the mother shared. Now, she said, the family is still awaiting details from the operating team who worked on her son. They make daily trips to the hospital which can cost as much as $20,000 via taxi. “We can only see our patient for one hour per day. Two people cannot go on the ward at the same time. It puts a strain on us because we have to look after him and turn him, but only one person can

Transport Minister Daryl Vaz says he will be looking into legislation to address acts of vandalism on State property, particularly those deemed as ‘stone-throwing’ incidents that usually cause millions in damage. This follows vandalism of one of the 50 newly acquired Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) buses which were rolled out for the new school year. An image on social media on Tuesday showed the bus with a smashed side glass. Speaking at this week’s post-Cabinet press briefing on Wednesday at Jamaica House, Vaz lamented that while damage to public property is a felony and carries federal charges in the United States of America, it is merely characterised as a stone-throwing incident in Jamaica. “We cannot spend this amount of money to have either idle or orchestrated attacks on Government’s property because the Government’s property is the taxpayers’ property. So that is something that I’m going to be looking at in relation to current legislation and whether or not it requires amended legislation because the time is now for this to stop,” he said. “It cannot be that we waited so long for 50 brand new buses and within the first day of operations there’s an attack. Thankfully, no one was injured but it is unacceptable and it cannot continue to be classified as a stone-throwing incident; it’s not; it’s an attack on Government property and it will be dealt with… going forward,” Vaz added. Minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for information, Robert Morgan chimed in, saying there are “vested interests who are not happy with the expansion of the JUTC fleet”. Vaz reminded the public that any improvement in transport, whether the bus system or the taxi system, is to the benefit of the citizens of Jamaica, “and therefore, it must be embraced by all well-thinking Jamaicans and leave the bad mind behind”. The JUTC has had a long-running battle with vandalism of buses which has caused injury to some of its drivers and passengers and resulted in millions of dollars spent on repairs. “These incidents have caused massive dislocation resulting in buses being down for inordinate periods of time as spare parts, which are not available here, have to be sourced overseas. This not only affects the operations and the ability of the company to generate much-needed revenue but also the public,” the company said.

Jump-starting a three-day-long event was a pre-conference social event held at AC Hotel Kingston Friday night allowing real estate investors, lawyers, and players in the wealth-building game the opportunity to mingle with like-minded individuals and form partnerships, before the big conference Saturday on wealth-building and real estate sessions. The evening was chilled and casual, with cocktails provided by the hotel’s bartending team. “We wanted to create an opportunity for people to be educated, entertained, build relations, and to feel inspired and motivated to build wealth, learning different things to make deals So we felt, you know, let’s do it over the weekend,” Keisha Bailey CEO of profit Jumpstarter, told the Business Social. Several guest speakers for the conference were ready to mingle and Hold hands to partner in wealth-building. The Business Social has the highlights.

The Here are the highlights from the event.

THE Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ) unequivocally condemns remarks by Dr Dayton Campbell, general secretary of the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP), at the party’s St Andrew East Central Constituency Conference on Sunday, September 3. Dr Campbell referred to Nationwide News Network (NNN) as an “incubator for the Jamaica Labour Party”. The remarks, said the PAJ, are not only irresponsible, but also dangerous. “Such remarks, coming from a prominent political figure, have the potential to place Nationwide journalists at risk of attacks by political activists and party supporters. The PAJ calls upon Dr Dayton Campbell to retract his harmful statements and promote an environment where journalists can work free from fear of reprisal,” said a PAJ statement. The PAJ, at the same time, reminded political leaders that the safety of journalists is paramount to the preservation of democracy. “By putting journalists in harm’s way, Dr Campbell’s comments are a blatant attack on press freedom and represent a grave escalation of assaults on the principles of a free and independent press. Freedom of the press is a fundamental pillar of any democratic society, and it is the responsibility of all citizens, including politicians, to safeguard and respect this vital component of our democracy,” said the PAJ. As the campaign season for national elections approaches, it urged politicians on both sides of the aisle to exercise caution and responsibility in their rhetoric. “Political discourse should be characterised by respect for differing opinions and a commitment to upholding democratic principles, including press freedom.” Nationwide, in a letter to the PNP general secretary, said it is beyond reprehensible that a man holding the position of general secretary of a major political party can seek to stoke anti-journalist feelings in the way he had. The radio station also told Campbell that by virtue of his words he has declared an open season on its employees, “effectively giving PNP supporters free reign to see us as the enemy and treat us accordingly”. NNN said Campbell’s comment also serves to pull down the country’s press freedom rank down to the gutter.

THE joint select committee (JSC) of Parliament, now reviewing the draft job descriptions for parliamentarians will be inviting the general public to make comments and provide suggestions on the document during a series of town hall meetings. Members of the committee at its first meeting on Tuesday at the Jamaica Conference Centre in Kingston agreed that four town hall meetings will be held across the island to capture the views of citizens. The committee tentatively set Sunday, September 24 as the date for the first town hall meeting, with member Floyd Green suggesting Jamaica College in St Andrew as a possible venue. This and the other dates and venues for the other meetings are to be finalised. Green made the suggestion for town hall meetings in response to committee Chair Marisa Dalrymple-Philibert’s concern about getting grass roots Jamaicans “who elect us” involved in the process. “It is very easy in this sort of arena to intellectualise and put guidelines and principles on things without taking note of our people, how they feel, how they act, and what they expect of us. I would like for us to find a way, set up a structure in this committee where we can hear from the ordinary person on the street what it is they [require of] us,” she said. In making his recommendation for the public meetings, Green said it is very important that the public’s views are garnered “on what they believe the role of a Member of Parliament (MP) ought to be, because, ultimately, they judge, they decide, so they really should play a part in telling us what they’re looking for, whether it is that, for example, MPs need more autonomy or less autonomy in relation to resources”. “It’s always a discussion that’s had on a theoretical level, but what are the people on the ground saying? What role should the MP play in the decision-making process regarding infrastructure projects and things of that nature. I think we have to hear from the people,” he said. Earlier in the meeting, committee member Kavan Gayle suggested that specific interest groups be invited to make written submissions to the committee. These are the Caribbean Institute of Human Resource Management, the Human Resource Management Association of Jamaica, the Jamaica Employers’ Federation, the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions, the Jamaica Customer Service Association, and Jamaica Accountability Meter Portal. The committee agreed that advertisements requesting submissions will be placed in the two major newspapers, television, radio, and on social media. Interested parties will be given four weeks within which to send in written submissions. Prime Minister Andrew Holness, in a statement in Parliament in June, had announced the establishment of a joint select committee to review the written job descriptions and enhanced code of ethics which have been drafted for parliamentarians. The job descriptions and the enhanced code of ethics are among a raft of measures Holness announced during a press conference in May, during which he said members of the political directorate will be held to account for their higher salaries as part of the Government’s compensation review for the public sector. On June 20 Holness tabled in Parliament the job descriptions of parliamentarians as a Green Paper and a White Paper for ministers.

JUSTICE Minister Delroy Chuck has confirmed recent indications by two Cabinet officials that the Government will be widening the category of offences for which individuals convicted for crimes in the past can receive expungemment. Expungement is having a conviction removed from one’s criminal or police record after a specific period of time has elapsed and after certain requirements have been met. The statute which authorises the expungement of criminal records is the Criminal Records (Rehabilitation of Offenders) Act, 1988. The principle underlying this provision is that a person who has made a sincere and successful attempt to be law-abiding should be given the opportunity to start afresh without being haunted by an unfortunate past. Last week Prime Minister Andrew Holness and National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang, during a town hall meeting in Montego Bay, said the expansion of the category was being mulled. The justice minister, under whose purview the matter would fall, in responding to queries by the Jamaica Observer said the justice ministry has already taken steps in that direction. “The MOJ is proposing to widen the categories of offences that will be available for expungement so persons who have completed their sentence and live a lengthy crime-free period in the community should be eligible for expungement,” he told the Observer. Dr Chang, speaking at the event last Thursday, had said Minister of Legal and Constitutional Affairs Marlene Malahoo Forte has brought several cases to his attention. “There were some changes to the law in 2014 which affected a number of individuals with minor prosecution and conviction; the law was changed to prevent expungement. The minister has brought a number of them to my attention; we can look at reversing those activities. They have been brought to my attention and I have a number of people who are genuinely in need of expungement,” Dr Chang said then. He was responding to a query from a resident of Hendon in the parish who wanted to know how a Jamaican with a crime on record that cannot be expunged could qualify for a job or homeownership. Dr Chang, further in his response, noted that there will be some reversals but said not all would be pardoned. Minister Malahoo Forte, in addressing the issue during the forum, said: “We know that there are many people who have run afoul of the law and, over time, have turned around their lives; and we also know that we are suffering from a serious crime problem in the country and employers want to know the history of the people they are employing. But for anyone who has committed an offence that is not on the list for expungement and you have really turned your life around, I would suggest that you apply for a pardon through the Office of the Governor General.” There are specific offences that the Criminal Records Rehabilitation of Offenders Act clearly specifies cannot be expunged at this time, including murder and offences in relation to rape, distribution of child pornography, carnal abuse with a person under 16, and sex with a person under 16. There are also issues in relation to firearm possession and ammunition that are not eligible for expungment at this time. Offences such as the import and export of narcotics (example cocaine and marijuana), and some offences under the Malicious Destruction of Property Act, such as arson, cannot be expunged under the current law. In order to qualify for expungement, two essential conditions must be satisfied — the offence in question must be one which attracts a non-custodial sentence or sentence of imprisonment not exceeding five years, and the person in question must not have had any other convictions during a specified period of time (referred to as the rehabilitation period). The rehabilitation period defines the length of time that a person must wait before an application can be made for the expungement of a conviction. This period varies according to the sentence imposed by the court and ranges from a minimum of three years for non-custodial sentences to a maximum of 10 years for custodial sentences. The rehabilitation period is calculated from the date of the expiration of the term of imprisonment (in the case of custodial sentences), and in other cases upon the satisfaction of the court’s sentence. An offender cannot apply for an expungement until the relevant rehabilitation period has expired. The sentence imposed by the court will determine the rehabilitation period that must elapse.

MONTEGO BAY, St James — Former Government Senator Dennis Meadows, who on Sunday got the nod to represent the People’s National Party in Trelawny Northern, has welcomed the Integrity Commission’s (IC) ruling that no charges will be laid against him in connection with the issuing of gun licenses to individuals with criminal convictions or adverse traces. But, asserting that the ruling had been submitted to Parliament around the same time that the allegations against him had been made, he has questioned why it took so long to clear his name. Meadows, a former board member of the Firearm Licensing Authority (FLA) walked away from the JLP in 2002 after a war of words with FLA CEO Shane Dalling, who named him as one of several officials who granted gun permits to people with criminal convictions or adverse traces. The Jamaica Observer obtained a copy of a letter on what appeared to be letterhead of the Integrity Commission, over the signature of Keisha Prince Kameka, director of corruption prosecution, who signed for and behalf of the Integrity Commission. “The director of corruption prosecution, pursuant to her statutory mandate under sections 34 (1)(a) and (34)(1)(b) of the Integrity Commission Act (ICA), concluded review of the “Special Report of Investigation Concerning Allegations of Acts of Impropriety, Irregularity and Corruption in the Issuance of Firearm User Licenses to Persons of ‘Questionable Character’ and a ruling was submitted to the commission through the executive director,” a section of the letter stated. It added, “The executive director, in accordance with the provisions of section 54 of the ICA, thereafter submitted the referenced report to the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate, under cover letter dated February 22, 2022, which detailed the ruling of the director of corruption prosecution that, ‘On careful assessment of the matter and the evidential material provided, it has been determined that no viable criminal charges can be laid.” A relieved Meadows said he was happy to have his good name cleared. But that relief was intermingled with other emotions. “My reaction is mixed. On one hand, I’m relieved to have my good name cleared. Anyone who knows me well will tell you I value my good name beyond anything. I’m certainly not an infallible being but I’ve always conducted my life in a manner that can survive scrutiny,” he told the Jamaica Observer on Tuesday afternoon. He is, however, upset that the ruling was not tabled in Parliament. “I was shocked to learn that the Director of Corruption Prosecution submitted her report to Parliament as far back as February 22, 2022, essentially the same time the substantive FLA report was tabled in Parliament. It begs the inescapable question, why the director’s ruling was not tabled at the same time,” he said. Meadows accused the Government of deliberately sabotaging him because he switched allegiance from the ruling Jamaica Labour Party. “In my view, this Government has abused and weaponised the Parliament against its detractors. It’s a vulgar abuse of the Parliament. They used the said Parliament to launch an attack on the very Integrity Commission…,” Meadows said. “I remain hurt by the sinister effort on the part of the Government to bury me alive because I dare exercise my right to associate with the People’s National Party,” he added. He said his wife and family have been “traumatised during the controversy”. Meadows said an explanation must be provided. “It’s my considered view that the president of the Senate, Speaker and the clerk of the House need to tell me and the public what caused it to be kept off the table of Parliament. I consider the Speaker a good friend and a decent person, but I’m also aware that politics often trump friendship. I suffered irreparable reputational damage while a report existed which clearly exonerated me,” he said. In February the IC came under harsh criticism over its handling of allegations of a conflict of interest in connection with contracts awarded to close associates when Prime Minister Andrew Holness was minister of education, during the period 2006-2009. In a report to Parliament, the IC said the prime minister had been referred for potential prosecution. Days after that tabled report attracted local and international attention, it was revealed that the IC had decided that there would be no criminal charges laid against the prime minister.

A heavy cloud of grief hovered over staff and students at Jack’s Hill Primary School in St Andrew on Monday as they started the new academic year without their principal, Donnette Witter, who died suddenly last Thursday. Witter, who would have celebrated her 41st birthday on November 17, reportedly woke up complaining that she was not feeling well. Shortly after, she died, plunging the school community into shock and mourning. The tragedy resulted in Education Minister Fayval Williams visiting the small campus on Monday during her now customary visit to schools at the reopening of the academic year. She offered her ministry’s support to students and staff. “This morning is a sad one for your school community. I can imagine the sorrow and grief you are feeling right now, but despite this you woke up and you are here. I applaud you for that. It is one thing to get [sad] news about somebody who was ageing or who was sick, but to get news of somebody who is young and otherwise healthy and vibrant just throws you off. We serve a living God and it is in moments like this that we can look to Christ for solace, even when we don’t understand everything that is happening around us,” she said. “You can count on the ministry to continue to provide emotional support and grief counselling as you go through this period. It is my first time to Jack’s Hill Primary. This is a pretty small school but it serves an important need in a community that is far away from the urban centre. We want to assure you that we will continue to provide as much as we can within the budgets that we have. We have a lot of schools but we know that this school will continue to grow and prosper and serve the communities around it. Thank you again to all the teachers who take part in building a nation,” the minister said. Valerie Walters, the senior teacher who is expected to act as principal, fought through tears as she remembered Witter. “I have been a colleague of Miss Witter for 17 years. I have known her since she came here. I have seen her development, straight from grades one and two up to where she was before she left us. Working with her was really a good thing. We got to know each other and we did numerous things together, like workshops and various activities,” Walters said. “Her biggest impact, to me, was the way in which she treated her students. She had her little way of getting through to them to get them to do what she wanted them to do and to get them back where they ought to be. We sometimes get some students who give us a warm time, but she would give her all. The relationship we had was very good,” Walters shared. According to Walters, Witter was always intimately involved in activities at the school that augur well for the development of the students and staff. “I will never forget last Teachers’ Day when she brought us together and we were just one family and there was no separation or hierarchy,” she said, adding that the last meeting the staff had with Witter was held online the day before she passed. “I am just sorry that we didn’t have a face-to-face meeting on Wednesday,” Walters said. “She encouraged, and she was someone you could talk to. She gave direction and she did not have any qualms about her position or anything. She was working with us for the betterment of the students and staff and so, again, I say, I miss her. “We really appreciate the support we are getting from the ministry to help and settle us and the students. We would not have been able to do it on our own. We are not in the frame of mind, so we really appreciate you,” she told Minister Williams and her team from the ministry. Keisha Reid, who said she has been teaching at the school since October 2021, shared that Witter always encouraged her. “I could go to her and I could call her at any time and she would be there for you. Sometimes in the classroom it was really challenging. Whenever I went to her office to express a problem, she always responded when things got challenging for me,” she said. “Working with her, I found her to be a very calm, genuine person. I am from St Mary and when I am travelling from that end to Jack’s Hill, I had to get up very early and come to town. She encouraged me to get a place in Kingston. She was searching around for me. When I told her that I found somewhere, she said that was very good, despite the high cost of the rent. She was like a mother to me. I am new to the system so when I needed help, I would go to her and she did not deny me of it. That is what I loved about her,” Reid told the Observer.

THE real test will come next week when all schools resume classes. But with only a handful of schools in the Corporate Area open on Monday the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) treated it as a mock exam and the crew at North Parade in downtown Kingston believes they aced it. From before 7:00 am three dispatchers were seen at the bus bay helping people to find which bus would take them to their destinations. The dispatchers were also busy organising drivers and ensuring that all was well. “This has been wonderful all morning. I would grade us as excellent,” dispatcher Carlene Brown told the Jamaica Observer in-between directing people as to where the bus they wanted to take was parked. A constantly smiling Brown was seen keeping tally of the buses coming in and going out even as she engaged passengers with a pleasant ‘good morning’. “This was like the old days. We have buses parked in case they are needed and you can see we are rolling out some of the [50] new buses which we just received,” added Brown as she expressed confidence that the State-owned bus company is ready for the real test. That confidence was shared by minister with responsibility for transport Daryl Vaz who told the Observer that while the bus company failed to roll-out the projected number of buses Monday morning the reports he received were encouraging. “The final projected roll-out for this morning [Monday] was actually 285, not the 300 that we had indicated last week,” said Vaz. He said 236 JUTC buses actually hit the road but approximately eight per cent were recalled because of defects, including problems with the fare collection machines and some for minor repairs. “But the good thing is that we were able to get everything out for the peak hours this morning [Monday] and brought them in for repairs during the day. “We are looking to have those sorted out to get back to between 285 and 300 within the next day or two, but it was a sterling effort by the management and staff of the JUTC, and by all reports it was a much improved back-to-school this morning based on the increase from 140 buses to 236,” said Vaz. “I am very optimistic, based on the reports, that the fare collection machines will be sorted out and the minor repairs will be done to get the fleet up to 300 as I had projected and committed to last week,” added Vaz. Late last week Opposition spokesman on transport Mikael Phillips had warned that the JUTC would be unable to roll out the 300 buses for back-to-school as promised by Vaz. “For the past five years, the JUTC has continued to float large roll-out numbers for back-to-school but has failed to achieve them. Last year, 270 was promised, but the company failed to top 180. The 2023 numbers given by the minister, therefore, lack credibility,” said Phillips.

WITH children being the complainants in 36 of the 46 sex offence cases heard by the Trelawny Circuit Court last term, commander of the police division for that parish, Deputy Superintendent (DSP) Winston Milton says cops are now worried about “an emerging trend” whereby fathers and stepfathers are primarily the perpetrators in the area which has struggled with paedophilia historically. “We are seeing an emerging trend with fathers and stepfathers being the perpetrators,” Milton told the Jamaica Observer on Monday. The cop, who said he was unable to supply the figures, stated that while police records have indicated that there has been a historical issue with sex crimes against children, there had been nothing to indicate that fathers were having sex with their daughters. Now he says the police have been seeing more of this occurrence, which is offset by an even more worrying factor of complicit relatives who would prefer that the victimised children keep silent. “The worrying concern for us in relation to this is that sometimes we see these victims being victims twice; meaning, they are victims of a sexual crime and there is also pressure by family members not to pursue the matter in court, and they are seen as pariahs when they do,” Milton told the Observer. According to the divisional commander, who said he is nonplussed by the reasoning of the adults in question, it is felt that because the crime has already occurred, the offending relative should be allowed to continue life without prosecution. In noting the high numbers of cases before the courts for prosecution in this respect, DSP Milton said, “We know we are going up against a deep-seated cultural practice and it won’t turn around overnight, but we have been relentless. We are enjoying a hundred per cent clear-up rate in relation to these cases because the victims know their perpetrators and this is because the perpetrators are usually in a position of trust — neighbours, guardians, fathers, stepfathers.” “What we do know is that we have a serious social issue in the parish in relation to this particular concern,” DSP Milton said, noting that some of the cases were before the courts prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the police have been partnering with external stakeholders, like the Church, lay magistrates, and others, to reach some of the likely victims and perpetrators. The lawman’s observations parallel those made by a senior member of the Bar with knowledge of the matters before the court in that locale. The lawyer, in an exclusive interview with the Observer in July, highlighting cases like that of a father who repeatedly abducted his teen daughter and raped her while videoing the encounters to satisfy what he said was his curiosity about what sex with his own child would feel like to a 60-year-old who threatened “to Obeah” his 12-year-old neighbour if she did not have sex with him, called for the communities to be named and shamed. The victims, who the Observer learnt are largely from the south Trelawny communities of Albert Town, Sawyer, Deeside, Litchfield, and Bottom River, have been largely ostracised by community members, some of whom have gone as far as to classify some of them as “loose” and “sluts”. “We are in a crisis in southern Trelawny. When you can pinpoint a geographical area it is bad. It is not a situation where it is scattered all over the place. I think these communities need to be named and shamed; they need to hear their community names being called and they are ashamed that this is where they live. It is terrible down here,” the senior counsel told the Observer. She said, in this instance, no fingers can be pointed at the justice system. “It’s not a failure on the part of the police to respond or to act, the matters are before the courts, so the police must be doing something, but the communities are complicit, the people who live in these communities are just so accepting, it’s the norm,” the attorney stated. Chief Justice Bryan Sykes, who was on the Trelawny Circuit and hearing the matters, blasted the offenders while slapping them with heavy sentences and disparaging what he termed “a culture and a pattern” in that locale. In March last year the Government opened a new child-friendly space for interviewing and assisting child victims, operated by the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA) in Trelawny. The multidisciplinary space was designed to provide child victims with a safe and private location to access immediate law enforcement and medical attention as well as referral to additional services in a trauma-informed setting.

FORMER Cabinet member Phillip Paulwell is urging Jamaicans to pay keen attention to their cybersecurity after his phone was cloned and his bank accounts hacked by scammers who are demanding US$50,000 from him to not make his information public. Paulwell on Sunday confirmed reports reaching the Jamaica Observer that he found out his bank accounts had been hacked and a substantial amount withdrawn after he attempted to make a withdrawal at a local financial institution. He said checks with other financial institutions at which he holds accounts showed that attempts had also been made to hack them. Days later he was contacted through a number he did not know with a male voice telling him that his phone had been cloned and they had access to his e-mail, pictures, personal and professional messages. “Subsequent to that I have been receiving threats that these persons now have 20 years of my e-mails, WhatsApp, and other things on my devices and that they intend to scandalise me for having sex with underage girls. I can say definitively that I have never had a relationship with anyone who is underage,” Paulwell told the Observer. He said the caller threatened to make public the information, including correspondence with his clients, unless he deposited the US$50,000 to a Nigerian account which was provided. “Again, my response is that all my legal work is above board,” said Paulwell, who is also an attorney. According to Paulwell, he contacted the local police while people in the United States, who were threatened by the extortionist, reported the matter to American law enforcement agencies. “My phones have been subject to scrutiny and I am determined that these culprits must be brought to book. I am now aware of who some of them are and the links that they might have to local people. We are going to be pursuing those matters and I intend to ensure that they are fully prosecuted,” said Paulwell, who is the Member of Parliament for Kingston Eastern and Port Royal and the Opposition spokesman on energy. He told the Observer that the international investigators traced the account which he was asked to pay the money to the United Kingdom and shut it down with some US$600,000 already in it. “And they told me that one payment to that account was for US$42,000 from an account in Jamaica,” added Paulwell. He said he refused to pay and on Sunday received reports from political and personal colleagues that they had been sent an e-mail with images which were on his phone. Paulwell said, despite the threats, he has no intention giving in to the demands from the extortionists. “Absolutely not, I believe that we need to resist these people. In fact, it is likely that more and more of this is going to happen now that there has been a clampdown on scamming. I believe more and more people are going into hacking as they believe that they can use this against people. “I believe we need to resist that and I will resist them especially because I know there is nothing illegal on my devices,” declared Paulwell.

MONTEGO BAY, St James — Last September looked very different for Georgia Adams. The resident of Catadupa in this western Jamaica parish was excited as she prepared to have her then-six-year-old son Jevanie Kidd enter the first grade at nearby Catadupa Primary School. Jevanie had recently graduated from Belfont Basic School and was already dubbed the sweetheart of his family. However, tragedy struck on September 8 — Jevanie’s fourth day of school — when he was washed away by a flood on his commute home. His body was found hours later by residents of the community who came out to support the family in their search for the much-loved Jevanie. It is believed that Jevanie encountered difficulty while attempting to walk by an open ditch in the flood-prone community. The intense weather conditions, coupled with the lack of proper infrastructure, were said to have been too much for the boy. For Adams, it has been an extremely difficult year navigating the loss of her only son while still trying to support her other children. She told the Jamaica Observer that a promise made by Member of Parliament (MP) for St James Southern, Homer Davis, to install a barrier at the ditch had brought a level of comfort to the family. This has, however, not been accomplished when Adams spoke to her five days shy of the first anniversary of the boy’s death. “I still feel so bad about it and sometimes I have to just cry, but nothing has been done as yet. They said that they are going to build a railing there, but it still hasn’t been done,” Adams told the Sunday Observer. “The rains have been on and off. Because in the first half [of the year], we had a lot of rains, but we know that next month is rainy time,” she added. At the same time, Adams noted that Jevanie’s death has been extremely hard on his older sisters. The boy, who would have been entering grade two on Monday, had reportedly shared very close relationships with his two sisters. It was one of his sisters who had got him ready for school on the day that he died. The family also vividly remembers how much Jevanie had cried to stay home that day. “They are feeling sad just the same. I am not really around them because I work every day, so they might only see me if I am on an evening shift. My younger daughter has been the same way since Jevanie died…she is always in bed. She goes to bed very early. She lies down and covers up her head, but sometimes she is not even sleeping,” Adams told the Sunday Observer. Adams explained that she, too, has found ways to cope with the loss of her son. “I mostly now focus on work, so sometimes I am not here at home. I use work as a way to just keep going,” Adams said. When the Sunday Observer contacted MP Davis, he stated that the matter was initially reported to the St James Municipal Corporation and work should be done to construct the railing by the local authority. However, a well-placed source at the municipal corporation has shared that the organisation was unaware of the matter. In the meantime, Clifford Bernard, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) councillor candidate in the Catadupa Division, told the Sunday Observer that he is aware of plans to restructure this area. The councillor candidate, while expressing major concern for the safety of residents walking along that area, called for an escalation of those plans, citing the danger looming during this year’s rainy season. “The minister made some pledges and we are hoping that things can materialise within a certain time span because we don’t want a repeat,” said Bernard. “It is very dangerous for kids and even senior people because if they slip and slide, that will be another casualty and that is what we want to prevent and hope not to happen again. We need a restructuring of the whole thing. We need an overhead bridge so they can walk over that section whenever rain falls [as opposed] to walking on the road that becomes the river way,” the councillor candidate stated. Bernard pointed out that the gutter carries flood water from hilly sections of the Catadupa community and surrounding areas. In its current state, both sides of the road lead to the stream which facilitates that runoff, however, there is no infrastructure in place to ensure the safety of the road users. A Catadupa resident, who only gave her name as Pamella, further told the Sunday Observer that parents have become fearful of the ditch, once it rains heavily. Her fear, she said, has now heightened, as her six-year-old daughter gears up to enter grade one at Catadupa Primary School. “We are very worried once it starts to rain because that area is just not safe. I am sending out my daughter to school on Monday and I plan to ensure that I always have someone to walk with her because I am just so afraid,” she said. Pamella added, “We still think about what happened to that young boy because he was just a baby and we hope that nothing like this will ever take place in our community. We have to protect our children, so I am begging that something be done about this gutter.” For Sonia Hylton, the safety of her 10-year-old son is also a concern. Hylton explained that he, too, attends Catadupa Primary and has to walk in this area to head home after school. “If it rains slightly then he can pass easily, but once we get some heavy showers, sometimes he has to just find somewhere to stay while waiting for the water to draw dung. The road needs to be fixed and they need to put in a better gutter to take the water away from the road,” Hylton bemoaned.

MONTEGO BAY, St James – Prime Minister Andrew Holness has assured affected public sector workers that the Government will rectify anomalies stemming from the recent public sector compensation programme. “So if the public sector is such an important variable in us achieving growth and one of their main concerns is the level of their compensation, then the Government at the same time we are asking for better service we also have to address the issue of their compensation. “A lot of people have been positively impacted by the compensation change, a lot of people. But they are not going to say. Those who have challenges, they must keep raising their voices so that nobody forgets them and so that their challenges can be addressed. And I know that there are some issues out there that need to be resolved. And I am saying to you, this is not a closed matter. We are still working with the relevant agencies. Those who have concerns, those who have not been addressed to make sure that they are addressed that there are no anomalies or distortions remaining, and that’s the commitment of the Government. I understand the complaints, but I am asking for some patience, I am ask for understanding, and I am saying to you, keep a positive outlook. These matters are going to be addressed,” he added. Speaking at a town hall meeting at Harmony Beach Park in Montego Bay Wednesday night, the prime minister made it clear that he was not in support of politicians being paid “disproportionately greater than anyone else”. “So the question is, well, the extent of what was paid to the elected officials versus what everybody else got, was that fair? That’s a legitimate question. It’s a just question to ask. My answer outside of the present circumstances would be that politicians should not be paid disproportionately greater than anyone else. That’s my honest and genuine belief. But why did this happen? Why were politicians, I’m using the word politicians, but why were our elected officials, the ministers, the parliamentarians, and the councillors? Why were they paid disproportionately to everyone else in some categories?” he asked. Holness offered that one of the factors which contributed to elected officials being so handsomely compensated now was because of the failure of previous Administrations to increase their salaries out of fear of political backlash. In fact, he noted that the last time that politicians received a pay increase was way back during the PJ Patterson-led Administration in 2002. “Well, first of all, because administrations, knowing the sensitivities of this pay issue, did not want to take the political risk to keep the elected officials pay in step with inflation and with the adjustments in salaries. “So the last time that politicians got a salary adjustment was in 2002. People forget the history that when the PJ Patterson Administration announced the 102 per cent pay increase, I was just a newby in Parliament, it was uproar and turmoil in the society, and he appointed the Oliver Clarke committee to review it,” Holness reflected. “And then the Oliver Clarke committee gave a report to Parliament. You know what they did after that? They appointed a committee, headed by Omar Davies, to review the review. By 2003 the second part of the increase had to be scrapped, you know why? Because the Government then had to impose a wage freeze. So they didn’t get the full increase, the full adjustment. So now we have put in place a system that will bring their pay to the correct level that they should be, which is just a huge jump,” he added. He argued that the next phase of “your Government strategic redevelopment of the country is about what we call performance-based compensation, performance systems, performance accountability, towards improving productivity. “We must get more out of every hour of work in the day. I know it is going to set off all kind of alarm and quarrel and all kind of things in the society. We have sometimes a view that asking for more work is almost like servitude. We tend to want to confuse service with servitude. “As a people, our mentality with this growing economy has to change now to keep that energy in the economy that we’re going to give more effort because we have to put in place a system that more effort is going to result in more pay. I noticed nobody clapped, because nobody believed it. People don’t believe it. But if the society is going to maintain what we have started and move to another level, then our system of reward must be one that is compatible with greater incentive and greater reward for greater work. “There are those who prefer the old system where effort is not measured. So think about it: If you work in an office and the man will come in, sit down at the desk, go on him phone, go on TikTok; phone a ring, him don’t answer it; file on him desk, him don’t do nothing about it. And the lady beside him as the phone ring she take it up; the files come in, she sign them off; and she don’t even take calls, but at the end of the day they get the same pay.what kind of system is that?” he questioned.

FRUSTRATION boiled over among ancillary, technical and administrative staff of the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech) in St Andrew on Friday morning as those workers staged a protest demanding better pay and treatment on the job. The protest prevented many, especially the new students, from conducting important business at the institution on Friday. Scheduled classes were still held for the most part. Janette Grayson, president of the University of Technology, Jamaica Administrative Staff Association (UTASA), apologised to the affected students but said the staff have crucial issues that need to be addressed. She declared that until those issues are addressed, protests will continue. “School started last week and it has affected our students badly, and we truly apologise. I am sure that students would have left from far in St Catherine and other parts of Jamaica today, but up here, three salary levels fell below the minimum wage when the Government announced the new minimum wage. Many of these are people who work in the sun — they don’t work in air-conditioned offices. “All the staff, including academic staff, went to management in 2019 and said we were being paid less than our counterparts at The University of the West Indies and other institutions that are similar to us. We said we wanted parity with all these groups. In 2019 the Ministry of Finance and our management paid our academic staff. In 2023 our management went ahead and compensated our executive management staff. They received 70 per cent parity and they also received their retroactive pay for parity. This group — ancillary, technical and administrative staff — has been agitating for our piece of parity, and we were told that we cannot get this right now because they have no funds. “We went to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Labour this year, and the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Finance asked us to prepare a proposal as it relates to this parity arrangement. On Tuesday our management met with the Ministry of Finance and they called the unions and said that we have an option to give up this parity for the compensation review to come, which we already have. Why should we give up parity for it? The staff is irate; they feel disrespected and are not feeling good about it,” Grayson told the Jamaica Observer, demanding that parity be paid by the end of September and that retroactive payments be made before then end of 2023. As the disgruntled staff protested, one of them shared they are forced to watch lecturers and others upgrade while administrative, technical and ancillary staff suffer. “Administrative staff like me get less that $2 million per year. That looks good on paper but it is not good in terms of what I actually get in my account. Pay has been late on a number of instances, probably since COVID-19. There has been a lot of changes in the payroll department; most of the people are new. Academic staff went and changed out their cars and all sorts of things and we are here operating as if it is business as usual. What is even worse is that it seems only academic staff are being promoted,” said the staff member. She added: “There was a time when [you could] take $20,000, at least, and go to the supermarket; I can’t do that now. That is crazy. The salaries for the academic staff, without any increases, are fine. Regular academic staff get around $3 million to $4 million per year; deans of faculties get up to $10 million. If we were to go back to the 2019/2020 annual report, the management salaries at that time would shock you; there were some senior academic staff who were getting more than the president. The president got somewhere in the region of $12 million and $14 million, [while] there were senior academic staff that got like $16 million to $17 million annually. There were some senior administrative staff above us, one or two of them were getting close to $19 million,” the staff member claimed. Another frustrated member of staff lamented that cost of living is increasing everyday and said their pay can barely support them and their familes. “Some of us have cars and we can’t do any repairs, buy parts, or anything. Petrol prices are rising and our income is not — we can’t even go to the supermarket. The academic staff can change their cars but we can’t; it is the same beat up car we have had for many years. I have been trying to live within my means but it is a struggle. If I were to get a little bit of increase, because I am so disciplined, I would be on easy street,” the staff member said. “Some of the managers come out here with us pretending to show support, but they don’t care; they got their raise. Just imagine administrative staff getting $2 million per year and you have children going to high school and university, plus you have a car and you have bills to pay,” the staff member said. Some students who were affected by the strike told the Observer they agree that the staff should get fair pay and treatment. “I am a first-year student. I don’t have classes on Fridays; however, I am supposed to register for a prerequisite course and I can’t get to register because of the protest. They deserve better treatment but at the same time others are inconvenienced. I saw two people at administration desk and they couldn’t tell me anything,” one student said. Another student complained she came to school to use the library but couldn’t. “It was closed. I didn’t see anybody to talk to. The library online broke down and the physical library is closed,” she said with a look of frustration on her face.

MONTEGO BAY, St James — Even though he said elections are not on his mind at this time, Prime Minister Andrew Holness used Thursday night’s town hall meeting in Montego Bay to reiterate his Administration’s focus on implementing long-term, sustainable solutions versus the Opposition’s promises of short-term fixes. At the same time, he conceded that it has sometimes been a struggle to get buy-in from some members of his team who become jittery that impatient voters will punish them at the polls. “I want you to know that your pain points today, the pressures you face today, are seriously addressed by your Government. It is just that you can’t see the fruition of the efforts because it takes time,” Holness told the large audience at Harmony Beach Park. “As the electorate, you know, you have the power to decide. Do you want a government that will strategically, robustly and intelligently address your issues or will you deal with a government that is going to come and promise you short-term fixes that won’t work? It’s up to you. My job is to make sure that I serve you as best as I can with the best of my ability and the sincerity of my heart to ensure that when these solutions come they will be there for generations, decades,” he added. Holness said his focus is not on amassing power but on doing what is best for the country. “I come from a generation that’s not power hungry. I am not in it for power. I have already declared that. I am in it to ensure that Jamaica is better off. And it confounds people because even within my Government there are those who want us to take short-term decisions because they are nervous about how people are going to vote,” he said. “Well, if you have power and you don’t do anything with it, it is a waste. If you don’t improve people’s lives, it is a waste. And I think by any measure, no matter what measure you want to use, this Administration has improved the lives of the Jamaican people in meaningful ways,” the prime minister added. During his address, he urged Jamaicans to be optimistic as the Government he leads has accomplished a lot. And he assured them that his comments had nothing to do with elections. “Why is it that I’m saying to you, don’t give up hope. It is not because of what everybody feels that somehow there is an election in the air. Everybody talking about elections, all of a sudden,” Holness said with a mischievous grin. He has noted, he said, a challenge for those inside the country to recognise the gains that have been made. Using the line “rain a fall but the dutty tough” from reggae icon Bob Marley’s song Them Belly Full, Holness said during a recent trip to America, members of the diaspora were impressed upon learning of the nation’s 4.5 per cent unemployment rate, the reduction in the national debt, seven consecutive budgets without the introduction of new taxes, among other positives. He said, however, that on returning to Jamaica the narrative is that nothing is being done to improve citizens’ lives. During his hour-long speech the prime minister also addressed those who have expressed concern about the three-time delay in local government elections. While he acknowledged the role that the polls play in a democratic process, he contended that they must not disrupt the actual work being done by the Government. “We are a democracy. When elections are due they are due,” he said. Holness reiterated that the delays were justified. “We must not postpone and defer and interrupt our progress for election. Elections must be routine. They must be very short, orderly and seamless. And then you get back to business,” he said. “But there are those who want to use elections to disrupt progress. So let me just say to you, my mind is not on election. My mind is on ensuring that those who were at the base of the society, who still have not yet felt the change that is happening, you will get the chance. Because your Government is not taking its eyes off managing your business and your affairs. In other words, there are those who are power mongers. They just want power. They don’t necessarily believe in your progress. And the truth is that when they get power, they don’t know what to do with it,” he added. The postponed local government elections are now to be held by February 2024 and general elections are due by September 2025.

RESIDENTS of Rum and Rosemary lanes in central Kingston who were left homeless due to back-to-back arson attacks last week are grateful for the level of clean-up activities that have taken place since but are worried about back-to-school for the children. In the attacks, which occurred last Thursday, nearly 50 people were burnt out at both locations, including more than 13 children who had their school uniforms and supplies destroyed by fire. During a visit to the area by the Jamaica Observer Thursday, some residents called for swift assistance to replace the items the children will need for the reopening of school on Monday. “I really wanted to get back the school supplies for my three-year-old son,” one woman told the Observer. Another mother, of 6 Rosemary Lane, lamented that everything was lost and parents who were affected by the fire need help to make the next move to secure back-to-school supplies. “Some of us stay in one of the burnt out rooms currently. People from Ministry of Labour and Social Security came and gave us mattresses and we put them on the ground. What we want help with now is the school stuff. We have eight children who go to school. People are saying the children might not go to school for at least two weeks into the new school year,” said the woman. “Only two of them go to basic school and one goes to primary school. Everybody else goes to high school. You have Kingston College, Jamaica College, Excelsior, and so on. All the things burn up, including bags, school shoes, and uniforms. Government representatives came and gave them some bags and some exercise books. They didn’t get any text books. They need the things on their book list, plus they need back uniforms as well,” she said. The mother also appealed for help to build a wall to prevent possible intruders from gaining access to them at nights when they rest their heads. “This was a targeted attack and we don’t want people to target us anymore. Right now, the place is too open,” she added as she lamented the condition that she and the others have been forced to live in due to arsonists. “I don’t like this because I am not used to this kind of life. I am used to my nice bedroom with nice television on the wall and all those things. I have the option of staying with family elsewhere, but I don’t want to do that. I want to stay in my bed,” she said.

THE Financial Investigations Division (FID) said it is expected to advise the police to make more arrests in relation to the fraud probe at Stocks and Securities Limited (SSL) as it reveals the skulduggery at the securities dealer is much bigger than previously thought and has affected almost twice as many people as stated earlier. Selvin Hay, director general of the FID, seemingly responding to concerns about the lack of update on the fraud probe, in a release Thursday said the investigation is progressing with the application of the highest professional standards. “It has taken on new dimensions which are wider than first expected,” Hay was quoted as saying in the release. “What is being uncovered is that there are approximately 70 affected accounts, this is significantly more than the just-over 40 affected accounts at the initial phase. The investigation has also identified other fraudulent schemes at SSL, which has resulted in the misappropriation and/or loss of numerous investors’ funds amounting to over US$10 million ($1.5 billion),” Hay said. When the probe started in January it was reported that the fraud involved some $3 billion. “The FID is robustly pursuing various lines of inquiry and taking all the necessary steps to lead evidence-based prosecutions in the court at the appropriate time against all guilty parties to include Jean-Ann Panton, the sole accused perpetrator so far,” the release said. But Panton, who was charged in February in relation to the fraud, is not the only person who will face the court when proceedings into the matter resume. “Before the next court date we anticipate the arrest and charge of other actors involved in the multiple fraudulent schemes recently discovered,” Keith Darien, the FID’s principal director of investigations, added. He, too, like his boss, cautions on the calls for updates on the matter. “The duration of the fraudulent activities as well as the variety of fraud has resulted in the investigative process taking an extended period. Prosecuting financial crimes requires meticulous evidence-gathering to ensure success in the court and to follow the money so that any illicit funds or assets may be identified, restrained, and recovered,” Darien said on the matter. Just last week, the Opposition People’s National Party issued a call for the Government and law enforcement officials to provide an update on the status of the investigations into the fraud at SSL. Darien, meanwhile, is appealing to victims of the fraud to come forward with information that can help in the investigation. “Our investigators have contacted the affected parties via e-mail and phone calls, but the responses from some have been short of encouraging. We continue to appeal to those affected to contact the FID. It is a critical part of seeking justice through the courts,” Darien said in the release. The investigative process has brought together a variety of local regulatory and law enforcement agencies to include the Financial Services Commission (FSC) and the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s (JCF) Fraud Squad. This is strengthened by investigative partnerships with the US-based Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and UK-based forensic accounting and intelligence firm Kroll, as well as relevant member countries of the Asset Recovery Inter-agency Network for the Caribbean (ARIN-Carib). Apart from unveiling that the fraud is bigger than first thought, the FID said it also revealed an entrenched culture of gross mismanagement dating back well over a decade. Dr Nigel Clarke, the minister of finance, in reacting to the release said the new information shows the commitment to unveiling the full extent of the fraud and the actions to be taken to prosecute those responsible. “On a number of occasions this year, including in my budget presentation in March of 2023, I outlined the policy position of the Government of Jamaica with respect to the investigation into the SSL matter. And that policy position that I have outlined is to get international help, to leave no stone unturned, and to follow the evidence wherever it shall lead. The release from the FID today is consistent with that policy direction,” Clarke declared. Justice David Batts ruled in mid-July that a trial to be heard between November 1 and 3 would be held in open court to allow clients, creditors, and the general public to follow the proceedings of the case. A pretrial review is set for October 2 as the FSC seeks to have its claim heard for SSL to be wound up due to it being insolvent. Kenneth Tomlinson is the temporary manager for SSL since January with the FSC seeking to have him appointed as trustee of the firm through the Supreme Court. SSL is currently involved in several open court cases, including with Welljen Limited, a business connected to Usain Bolt; Jean Elizabeth Forde; Deborah Franz; Mae Elaine Tapper; Jamaica Small Loans and Microfinancing Limited (t/a Boost Financial Services); and Robin De Lisser. Former SSL directors and executives, such as Sarah Meany, Mark Croskery, Hugh Croskery, Jean-Ann Panton, Lamar Harris, Zachary Harding, and Jeffrey Cobham have been listed as additional defendants in amended claims by some of the claimants listed above. Kroll Associates UK was appointed in March as the forensic auditors in the investigation, which spans nearly a decade. The FSC has also sought several new hires in the last two months, including a senior investigator and analysts for nearly every division. Auditing firm KPMG confirmed in a media statement in May that it had not audited SSL since June 30, 2017. SSL was cited nearly every month in 2022 by the Jamaica Stock Exchange’s Regulatory and Market Oversight Division (RMOD) for different breaches before they were ultimately terminated as a member-dealer on February 24. Several stocks held by the firm were sold in the month of February and up to the termination date. Some SSL clients received an e-mail entitled ‘SSL Account Update – [Urgent Action Required]’ on July 17 which highlighted that the temporary management team is finalising the requirements to allow clients access to their accounts again and is requesting certain information from

MORE than 400 teachers have resigned from the public school system in the past 11 days with a big chunk of that number submitting their resignations after collecting their August salary last Friday. But the main union which represents them, the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA), is not supporting this sudden resignation which it accepts could lead to chaos when the new school year begins on Monday. JTA President Leighton Johnson is urging his colleagues to follow the rules if they plan to resign, even as he backs their right to do what they think is best for themselves and their families. “Article 57, Regulation B does indicate that teachers are to give the due notice; however, in a system where it is difficult to police this particular regulation, I think now what we need to do is to ensure that systems are put in place — not to prevent teachers from exercising their franchise of choice — but just to ensure that teachers will do the right thing,” Johnson told the Jamaica Observer. He argued that in many instances teachers grab the opportunity late or move at the spur of the moment as opportunities are presented to them. However, Johnson was adamant that teachers need to do the right thing in all occasions “to ensure that as they make the conscious decision to secure their families future, they consider ensuring that the position they are leaving, or the school they are leaving will not be left in a position of chaos” According to Johnson, the JTA is not surprised by the rash of resignations which has seen the number of teachers leaving the public school system jump from 427 on August 18 to 854 on August 29. “The writing has been on the wall [so] this comes as no surprise to us. The recruiters have [been] vigilant and buoyant in our country and the teachers have indicated, for a very long time, that our compensation package was not adequate for them to continue to live like this. “We saw this coming, we constantly echoed the call to the Minister of Education [Fayval Williams] that we have heard, our ears being on the ground, was that several teachers have already taken up positions in schools in other jurisdictions,” Johnson told the Observer Wednesday morning, minutes after the education minister had provided the latest numbers on teacher resignations. Addressing a post-Cabinet media briefing at Jamaica House, Williams reiterated that 1,538 teachers resigned from the public school system between January and September 2022 as she gave the latest figure for the corresponding period this year. Williams underscored that the practice of teachers resigning without notice was unprofessional and pointed to the law which requires teachers in permanent positions to give three month’s notice, and those in temporary or acting positions to give one month’s notice. “Teachers who give three month’s notice and continue to work, of course they will be paid, they are not denied their payment. If that happened to some long ago in the past, that is not happening now, and so we are asking teachers who make their personal decisions to resign to be mindful of the legal requirements that are here,” said Williams. “Obviously getting notice here, a few days before…school opens, I can fully understand the uncertainty of our principals, [and] our boards across Jamaica, but that is why, two, three weeks ago, we sent to our schools a number of different strategies for them to use to help with the recruitment process,” said Williams as she reiterated the measures the ministry has implemented to address the shortage of teachers in schools. These include allowing school boards to conduct early recruiting of teachers to fill any vacancies, permission to engage some teachers who are on approved vacation leave and paying them for the period while also paying them for their vacation, the extension of service of teachers who are scheduled to retire, and the provision for schools to engage part-time teachers or those who had retired since January 2018. Williams noted that despite the recent flood of resignations there is a high of 3,119 and a low of 1,693 teachers available to enter the public school system their year. “I know it’s not easy…when school is going to reopen next Monday to recruit, but we came out with these strategies well ahead of time, our job bank is available, so we anticipated that again this year we would witness teachers resigning without giving…the legal notice that is required,” said Williams as she thanked the stakeholders for the work they did last year despite the resignation of more than 1,500 teachers.

MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Even as Fitz Bailey, deputy commissioner of police (DCP), revealed that four people, including a woman, have been arrested and $2.5 million recovered following last Friday’s attack on a Beryllium crew in Mandeville, the total amount stolen is yet to be disclosed. “That attack, which has caught national attention — I just want to point out that we are conducting a high-level investigation in that matter and at this time I can report that we have arrested four persons, including a female,” DCP Bailey said while addressing a press briefing at the Greater Portmore Police Station in St Catherine on Wednesday. “We have recovered, so far, over $2.5 million,” added Bailey. He said the incident, which resulted in five people being shot and injured, is akin to terrorism. “The investigation continues as we seek to bring those who are responsible for that act, which I consider [to be] something that is bordering on terrorism, when you can, at that time of the day — without any form of provocation — fire your weapon carelessly injuring at least five people. Two were seriously injured by that shooting, but we commit as an organisation to ensure that this matter is properly investigated,” he said. “All those persons who are responsible will be brought to justice. I am confident that it will be done,” he added. The attack on the Beryllium couriers occurred shortly after 5:00 pm on Friday outside a branch of Scotiabank. Footage, which has gone viral, show men armed with high-powered weapons making their escape with two bags presumably containing cash. On Saturday, the police said a suspect was apprehended driving one of two vehicles in which it is believed the criminals made their escape. Police said the suspect was travelling in a black Toyota Wish motorcar, which was intercepted about 1:30 am on Saturday in the vicinity of Sunset Boulevard on the Four Paths main road in Clarendon. Police said one 9mm magazine, one M16 round, two AK-47 rounds, and a ski mask were found in the vehicle. It is understood that the vehicle, which bore mismatched registration plates, belongs to a resident of Portmore, St Catherine.

COASTER bus operators who ply the Half-Way-Tree (HWT) to downtown Kingston route are not buying into the Government’s proposal to relocate them from a lay-by which sits in the vicinity of Mandela Park and the HWT clock. The plan is to relocate the operators to the HWT Transportation Centre, less than 100 meters away, where pickups and drop-offs will be permitted. The proposal was announced by chairman of the Transport Authority (TA) Owen Ellington during a post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House on Wednesday. According to Ellington, who is a former commissioner of police, the idea is to have the coaster bus operators who run from Red Hills Road and Constant Spring to HWT and also to downtown Kingston begin to pick up and let off passengers inside the HWT Transport Centre. The chairman said the move would free up the roadways, blaming the bus operators for regularly stopping to pick up and let off passengers in live lanes, causing traffic congestion. He also raised the issue of extortion and alluded that the HWT Transport Centre would provide a safe space for operators. Despite Ellington’s explanation, numerous coaster bus operators were livid on Wednesday when they spoke to the Jamaica Observer, claiming that the Government had an agenda other than what was stated. The coaster operators also charged that the move was a way to interfere with their earnings, whilst also chiding Ellington for speaking on their behalf and stating that they have an issue with extortion. According to one conductor, “The men what dem say collect money, we don’t have problems with them. If they change the system, it is going to cause riot. They are watching the money that we are making. Life is easier out here where everybody can eat a food. If they try that, Andrew Holness cannot win again.” He added, “They say they want to stop extortion, but they can’t really go against it. If your main source of income is to collect from the buses and you change the system, what is going to happen? They say they are trying to stop extortion, but we feel they are trying to set up the Jamaica Urban Transit Company drivers against coaster drivers. They are also watching the fact that the boss will get between $25,000 and $30,000 per day. They hear that conductor will get $10,000 for the week. It’s like they want their piece,” the outspoken conductor said. Further, one driver said things are fine the way they are right now. “Remember that right here, we are all right. We don’t want to go over there with the Government’s yellow buses. We are not even going to get to stay over there and load the bus properly. They say we have no manners and behaviour, but at the same time, they don’t have to deal with us like that,” he said. Another driver, also incensed, said taxis will start to get all the work if the proposed system is implemented. “The people are going to run into the taxis. Who is going to take our buses? People are not going to wait on us. You will join the line of buses for one hour and people just walk past and gone inna taxi. They leave you and you feel like an idiot. The people love ready done, so the system they propose about the Transport Centre is not going to work out. Everybody knows they can find us right here,” he said. In the meantime, Ellington said there are some concerns about extortionists who will be impacted and may want to impede the operations in the transport centre. He pointed out that mechanisms are being put in place to deal with potential threats and said vehicles coming into the transport centre will be given a specific time frame within which they can drop off and pick up passengers. “We have spoken to deputy commissioner in charge of crime to send members of the organised crime branch to the centre because we are going to commence an assessment of the potential for criminal activities impeding our efforts. I assure Jamaicans that we are doing everything necessary to ensure a reliable and secure public transport system,” Ellington said. In support of the drive to relocate the buses, Ellington said there are plans to erect directional signs that tell drivers and passengers where pickups and drop-offs can take place. He added that a meeting with the coaster bus operators inside the HWT Transport Centre was scheduled for Wednesday at noon but had to be postponed as a key person to the discussion was unavailable until the middle of next week.

PRESIDENT of the Jamaica Independent Schools’ Association (JISA) Rev Wesley Boynes is charging church-affiliated private educational institutions to steer schools back to the foundational values of the nation and cast away the “dark forces” seeking to inculcate strange cultures, such as expanded forms of gender identity. “There is so much turbulence in the sector. As I speak at this very moment there are very dark forces at work in our lovely country trying to engineer major shifts in our traditional and foundational values, customs, and norms in the name of modernisation and achieving the status of First World,” he told a prayer breakfast hosted by the St Andrew Preparatory School on Tuesday. He noted that these foundational values, which normally give shape and context to our conduct as a people, “seem to be under great attack and are being pushed through the door, little by little”, noting that these values include accountability to God; traditional family structures; leadership in the home; manhood; gender identity issues; respect for women; how we live with our neighbours; civic responsibility, including keeping the surroundings clean; as well as decorum and humility in politics and other spheres of leadership. “As a country, we seem to be adopting the values and cultures of so-called First World nations, which don’t make sense. You just turn on the news and we can see for ourselves that these nations are, in fact, collapsing and imploding because of the practice of these same strange values and behaviours which have been thrust upon Jamaicans,” he said. Making reference to the prophet Isaiah in the Bible, who warned of a time when deep darkness would cover the Earth, Rev Boynes said, “It seems like that time is now when in some of the so-called developed countries it is even politically incorrect to describe yourself as a woman.” “In California, they have now passed some laws there, where a child at five years, a young, young child, can divorce his or her parents, if as a little boy you [approach] your parents and say I am a girl and they refuse to accept that you’re a girl, that child now has a right to divorce his or her parents. And as they say, anytime America sneezes, what happens?” he said, hinting of the possibility that this could find its way into Jamaican laws. “As president of the Independent Schools’ Association I see that the darkness is attacking our education system in an attempt to introduce strange values, qualities, and habits to our children,” he said and referred to what he described as a strange textbook that found its way into the school at which he was chairman of the Parent-Teachers Association. He said the book’s definition of family structures was not aligned with what he had learnt in the Bible Rev Boynes stressed that faith-based educational institutions are ideally positioned and structured and have a very critical role and responsibility to play in “arresting this alarming shifting and sliding of our core values”. The JISA president, however, said he has clearly observed that “an alarming amount” of church schools are not so focused on ensuring that the operations of the institutions and the output of those schools reflect the values of the respective host churches in a satisfactory manner. “There seems to be a widening gap or a drift away from the foundational values of the church and many church-connected educational institutions, and I can speak to that because I go around the country [speaking with educators]. This leaves me very, very concerned,” he said. He reminded that the original vision behind faith-based educational institutions was much more than about passingexams for Primary Exit Profile or Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate exams. “It was about producing God-fearing students of pristine values and character.” Rev Boynes said the 93-year-old St Andrew Prep School, “as one of the foundational educational institutions which participated in the birthing of our nation”, has a responsibility to promote the foundational values of Jamaica. “This status gives you the right to speak into any negative changes and development in the nation because you were here for the birthing of this nation. I would like to encourage you to elevate your awareness of the role that you play as a school. “I would like to encourage the members of the church bodies connected to the school and the parents and the teachers to rise together, be vigilant, and speak as one. You are guardians of the original foundational values of Jamaica,” he said. Playing on the theme of the prayer breakfast, ‘Together We Rise’, Rev Boynes further encouraged the school to rise up together and revisit the original mission of the school and to “rise up together and protect the values, the culture, and the spiritual traditions of the school. You have a voice, do not give in to the strange foreign cultures”. He also encouraged parents to rise up together and support the efforts of the school to ensure that the leadership and teachers are well compensated. “There are over 657 registered private schools in Jamaica, plus you have hundreds of others that are provisionally registered and a few more who have just applied for registration…So it’s about 1,500 or so in all. I only know of three schools in Jamaica that charge the full school fee — the fee that covers the budget entirely. All the other schools have to do all sort of different things to the cover that gap. So that’s why parents should support schools with all that they got,” he said.

IT was an emotional moment on Tuesday evening for relatives of 17-year-old Alecia King as she was flown to the United States for surgery, after she was doused with gas and set ablaze last Thursday, allegedly by her ex-boyfriend, in Linstead, St Catherine. Alecia’s stepmother Julian Mendez, who began to speak in tongues while standing on the tarmac at Norman Manley International Airport, thanked God, the Sanmerna Foundation, and everyone who played a role in flying the teen to Shriners Hospital for Children in Texas. She was flown in a Trinity Air Ambulance jet. The 18-year-old’s ex-boyfriend, who allegedly set the teen on fire while she slept in bed early Thursday morning, has been on the run since. The last thing Mendez said before boarding the airbulance with King was that the accused should turn himself in to the police. The ex-boyfriend has failed to report to the police, even after numerous appeals. “They need to catch him now or he needs to turn in himself,” she said before lamenting the critical state the teen is in. “I am nervous but I am very grateful,” she told the Jamaica Observer. Demar King, Alecia’s brother, described the act against his sister as evil, and he too appealed to the accused to turn himself in. “The family is hit by this hard. She did her Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate exams this year and on the day when she was to receive her results she got burned. “Personally I don’t know the fellow but I want to tell him to turn himself in. This was a cruel act, an act of great evil. What you did will affect her life permanently. This was a destructive act. Turn yourself in and let justice take its course,” the brother appealed. “She is such a brilliant girl. She is sweet, caring and loving. When she is around, you feel comfortable and at peace. She is always helpful. She is always mannerable. For something like this to happen to her it is very sad. It would have been better for this situation to not have happened. Seeing that it happened and the critical state that she is in, I am sure that she is now in good hands. I thank the Sanmerna Foundation for helping to make this a possibility. It happened so fast. The situation required rapid action, and that was definitely executed,” he added. The last conversation he had with his sister was about a month ago, when she called to apologise for missing a babyshower for his baby that was on the way. “She wasn’t able come but she called and apologised for not being there. That was a month ago,” he said. Stephen Josephs, projects manager of Sanmerna Foundation, the entity leading the mission to help Alecia, thanked the doctors at University Hospital of the West Indies for keeping Alecia stable. “The doctors did a very good job to stabilise Alecia; she could only tolerate the flight based on how stable she was. The doctors at Shriners are waiting to commence treatment,” Josephs said. Robert White, director of Sanmerna Foundation, meanwhile issued an appeal to jealous boyfriends not to make their jealousy get the better of them. Seeing the aircraft lift off with Alecia, White described the feeling as bittersweet. “This is bittersweet. Whenever there is going to be domestic violence, just walk away. That simple walk away can save your life and it can save other people’s lives. Take in consideration that this is a young girl; she is just 17. The person who set her ablaze is 18 years old. Their lives will not be the same again after what happened. I’m asking Jamaicans to stop domestic violence,” White said.

MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Kern Spencer, who lost his bid to represent the People’s National Party (PNP) in St Elizabeth North Eastern in June, has again faced defeat after being rejected to continue as the party’s Region Five chairman. Hopeton McCatty, a former chairman of the PNP’s Region Five, has been returned as its chairman. Region Five comprises Manchester and St Elizabeth. McCatty, who was replaced two years ago as chairman by Spencer, regained the post on Sunday. He received 199 votes to Spencer’s 135 during a regional executive conference at Knox College Cobbla Campus. Spencer, during an interview with the Jamaica Observer, suggested he was not confident he would be selected to continue as chairman due to poor mobilisation. “I was contemplating long and hard if I should have run back [because] sometimes it is best to quit while you’re ahead. I know that I will go down in history for the regional chairman who has been responsible for rebuilding Region Five,” said Spencer. “… There were Comrades who were encouraging me to go forward [but] I must say there was a lack of enthusiasm on my part to go forward. So, as it relates to the results, that would have been [due] to a lack of mobilisation on our part,” he added. This latest defeat follows Spencer losing his bid to be the party’s representative in St Elizabeth North Eastern against Zuleika Jess. When asked about his political future Spencer said he “will still be contributing” to the PNP’s mobilisation. “You don’t have to be at the helm to do the party’s work… I may just not be the regional chairman but sometimes you are more effective operating from the stands than being at wicket. I am still here. I have a number of candidates who I have been working with at the local government level over the last two years and I will continue to be working with them,” he said. “Undisputedly, the region is now in a state of political readiness and is ready for any form of political eventuality. I ensured that we have all 30 local government election candidates in place, and within a couple more weeks we will have all the parliamentary candidates in place,” he added. Spencer credits himself for making the party’s Region Five attractive. “I wish Comrade McCatty all the best and, as I said in a post that I made on social media, I dedicated two years, basically a sacrifice, because when you are in Opposition people don’t remember that it is voluntary work — you don’t get paid for it,” he said. “It is a full-time job so I dedicated two years of my life to rebuilding the region. It is strong and firm now [and] in a winning position. I took it from where nobody was interested in the PNP, where we couldn’t even have quorums and meetings. I took it from there and I rebuilt it. Now, it is just pure excitement the workers are re-motivated. The machinery is up and running in the constituencies, divisions in the group level, and I am happy and pleased, and I want to commend all those who worked with me over the last two years,” added Spencer. He said he will be supporting McCatty in Region Five. “I ran two years of serious sacrifice — financial, mental and physical — and the two years felt like ten years because it was a lot of work that we had to do,” he said. “I am now handing over with no malice — just love and peace and unity to Comrade McCatty for him to run the next leg,” added Spencer. The Observer was told that the PNP has settled representatives in Manchester Southern, Manchester North Eastern, St Elizabeth North Western, St Elizabeth South Eastern. “We are fifty per cent in both parishes… We are looking to have that settled within the next couple of weeks,” Spencer said. McCatty told the Observer that he will be mobilising the region with the assistance of Manchester North Western Member of Parliament Mikael Phillips and former Manchester Central MP Peter Bunting. “I want to thank Kern for his contribution and, going forward [as] Region Five, ensure that we secure the victories and Comrade Mark Golding becomes the next prime minister of Jamaica… For the last two years I have worked with Comrade Kern in the region with no issues and I am sure that he will work with me. In St Elizabeth North East Comrade Jess is now the candidate, and I expect him as a Comrade to work with Jess,” he said. “In terms of election preparedness, Comrade Mikael Phillips is in charge of St Elizabeth and Comrade Peter Bunting is in charge of Manchester… The party is getting itself ready, and with the assignment of Comrade Mikael in St Elizabeth and Comrade Bunting in Manchester that is a signal that we are taking it very seriously,” added McCatty.

BUOYED by the recent passage of legislation by the British Parliament setting guaranteed services which banks must provide to their customers, Member of Parliament [MP] for St Catherine Southern Fitz Jackson has called on the Government to open debate on the banking Bill which he has tabled in Parliament. “The Bill is currently on the Order Paper of Parliament and the Government has refused to put it on the agenda so that we can vote on it again,” Jackson told the Jamaica Observer in reference to the proposed amendment to the Banking Services Bill which he re-tabled after the initial proposed legislation was voted down by a Government majority in 2018. “I challenge the Leader of Government Business in the House [of Representatives Edmund Bartlett], I challenge the Prime Minister [Andrew Holness], to put that Bill on the agenda of Parliament at the next sitting when we resume from the summer break. “It is already there on the Order Paper so let us have the MPs vote with their conscience and we will see who will have the courage to protect the Jamaican people,” declared Jackson who sits on the Opposition benches. He pointed to a British Government statement published on August 18 which sets out the minimum expectations on banks to protect services for people and businesses wanting to withdraw or deposit cash. Under the new British law the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has been provided new powers to protect the provision of cash access services. This includes protecting cash access without any fees for those who hold personal current accounts. Building on laws granted through the Government’s Financial Services and Markets Act, 2023, the FCA will use these new powers to make sure banks and building societies are keeping up to the established standards. British Economic Secretary to the Treasury Andrew Griffith said: “Whilst the growing choice and convenience of digital payments is great, cash has an important and continuing role to play. That’s why we are taking action to protect access to cash in law and laying out that this means fee-free withdrawals and the availability of cash facilities within a reasonable distance.” Griffith added: “People shouldn’t have to trek for hours to withdraw a tenner [£10] to put in someone’s birthday card — nor should businesses have to travel large distances to deposit cash takings.” In applauding the British Government, Jackson underscored that free access to cash is one of the provisions that the Bill which he tabled in Parliament seeks to ensure. “We need to acknowledge that there is an imperative where people who put their money in financial institutions should have free unbridled access to that cash which belongs to them rightfully,” said Jackson. He argued that the banks have access to money deposited by their customers and use that money to make super profits while penalising depositors by charging them a fee to do withdrawals. “What the British Government has done is to say not only must you not be penalised by paying a fee to access your money, it should be accessible, meaning it must be made available at convenient points for you to have it. “In Jamaica we see where many banks, which report billions and billions of dollars in profit annually, are closing access points to their customers right across the country because they do not want to spend money to provide the convenience to their customers to access their banking services. “Even in the absence of operating branches, there is still a gross inadequacy of ATMs across the country that people can access their money,” added Jackson. He argued that the British Government has decided to respond to the needs of the public while the Holness Administration has instead decided to protect the interests of the banks without requiring them to provide a minimum set of services at no charge. Jackson has already filed four claims before the court seeking a declaration that the charging of encashment fees by banks is a breach of the Bills of Exchange Act. He filed the lawsuit after a May 2019 incident in which he claimed he was compelled to pay a $385 fee before a teller at Scotiabank’s Portmore branch would cash a $2,500 cheque in his name. He is seeking a declaration from the court that Scotiabank, through the imposition of the fee, has breached its obligation by failing to honour a negotiable instrument. Efforts to settle the lawsuit through mediation have failed.