The Member of Parliament for Kingston Central, Mr. Ronald Thwaites, and the People’s National Party’s (PNP) candidate for the said constituency, Mrs. Imani Duncan-Price are insisting that an atmosphere of peace and law and order will only be achieved through genuine collective community effort. They said that although the States of Emergency (SoEs) are being declared in many places, the sad reality is that the unrelenting murder rate confirms the urgent need for an effective national crime plan.
Without a crime plan, hard policing alone in Central Kingston, will not bring peace, Duncan-Price explained.
“As Dr. Peter Phillips and the PNP have repeatedly said, we need a real Crime-Fighting plan that incorporates urban renewal, jobs, land reform, improved educational opportunities, and long-lasting social interventions, etc,” Mrs. Duncan-Price said.
Mr. Thwaites and Mrs. Duncan-Price were responding to the Kingston Central Police Division being declared as an area under a State of Emergency by Prime Minister Andrew Holness yesterday. They said there have been several other initiatives across the constituency to address crime and violence, and these have shown positive results.
She explained that she had organized with several local businesses and fundraised $1m for the Peace Management Initiative (PMI) to do intense work on the ground with all relevant groups from December – January after the last spike in murders in November 2019.
“The effort saw a reduction in the number of murders in the area. But such efforts need consistent funding from the government, not to be defunded as is happening now with PMI,” Mrs. Duncan-Price said.
Towards that, a multi-stakeholder meeting involving the police and Peace Management Initiative’s (PMI) representatives, businesspersons, principals of schools in the constituency, chairpersons from Community Development Councils (CDCs), was held only last Thursday to address troubling concerns in some communities.
“In the meeting, the Police indicated unequivocally that the current spike in murders was not political. We all agreed that all residents deserve real, sustained peace so the communities can thrive,” Mrs. Duncan-Price said.
MP Ronald Thwaites and Mrs. Duncan Price also expressed condolences to the families who have lost loved ones in the ongoing violence in the communities and offered prayers, especially for the young children who will have to grow up fatherless or motherless.
