WESTERN BUREAU: President of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), Peter Moses, has rejected a claim by Paul Burke, a high-ranking official of the ruling People’s National Party, that the business community’s recent outcry about the island’s high crime levels was hypocritical.

“I reject it, based on the fact that the criticism is based on (claims that) the business community is now taking up the cry because crime is affecting them directly. That is absolute nonsense,” Moses told yesterday’s quarterly luncheon of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

He maintained that the concerns were not new as the business community has, in the past, expressed similar concerns.

“It hurts me to hear somebody try to position the business community as a bunch of hypocrites because we have started to raise the level of consciousness at this time,” he said.

Last month, Burke, in response to business leaders’ concerns about the high levels of crime, described the private sector bosses as hypocrites and charged that they were only now complaining because the problem had spread from the inner-city communities to more affluent neighbourhoods.

But yesterday, Moses lashed out at Burke and other critics, arguing that they have used the crime issue as a political football.

“To see such an important issue taken back into what I would call a political arena; to classify business people as hypocrites for responding the way we have to the unprecedented level of crime, I reject that,” he said.