KINGSTON, Jamaica — As part of its annual Youth, Local Government and Community Month programme of activities in November, the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) has reactivated its Community Charter /Livity Code (2010).

The PNP said this will be implemented as a community mobilisation and public education project in building stronger, better and safer communities, focused particularly in the communities in which the party enjoys support and can assert some positive influence.

According to a news release from the party on Saturday, the Community Charter as it was then called, was developed and promoted in the Corporate Area /Region Three in the mid-2000s as a values and attitude programme to prevent and or mitigate corner and community conflicts, which had the potential of evolving into gang warfare and criminality.

“In 2010, the Community Charter was revised and upgraded as the 2010 Community Charter /Livity Code and formally launched by then National Security Minister Dwight Nelson and then leader of the Opposition, Portia Simpson Miller, on May 2, 2010, at a Region Three rally held at the Mico University,” the release said.

As announced by party General Secretary Paul Burke at the party’s last National Executive Council Meeting, the party, while in Opposition, has to continue playing both an active and proactive role in discouraging criminal activities and by extension building safer communities.

Region Three Chair Phillip Paulwell has welcomed the project saying that the intervention was both timely and necessary, while Kingston’s Mayor Angela Brown Burke has said that councillors will once again promote the Community Charter and Livity Code as they carry out their ongoing community work, which will be intensified for Local Government and Community Month, which commences on November 1, 2016.