THE Jamaica Broilers Group yesterday made its former corporate headquarters on Hope Road in Kingston available, free of cost, to the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) to serve as a multi-purpose centre for this year’s general elections.

The centre, which will continue to function one month after the elections, will begin hosting twice daily media briefings the day after the elections are announced. It will be manned by at least four core employees of the EOJ.

“The centre will serve as a clearing house for events and exercises, for co-ordination and collaboration, a point of contact for early conflict resolution, problem solving, a point at which reliable and authentic information is disseminated,” Electoral Advisory Committee (EAC) chairman, Professor Errol Miller, said at a function where the keys to the premises were officially presented to him.

According to Miller, the centre will be furnished with the most modern information technology to offer the kind of election process that Jamaica can be proud of. “Our information system will be linked to the 60 constituencies to deal with (election) results and track down developments on the ground,” he said. “It will have a database electronic map of the island, tracking events in all parishes and (parish) council divisions.”

Both political representatives on the EAC — Maxine Henry-Wilson of the People’s National Party and the Jamaica Labour Party’s Ryan Peralto — hailed the establishment of the centre as an important vehicle in the election process.

“It is an extremely important innovation,” said Henry-Wilson. “In the past, what we have had (on election day) is conflict over issues that can be easily solved if people were just coming together and communicating with each other. I think it will contribute very much towards lowering the temper and temperature in the elections.”

Peralto said the centre would create “a great opportunity to settle issues before they get out of proportion. It will help the system by cutting out a lot of misleading reporting that takes place by journalists, because reports that come before the centre, we will have the ability to check them out carefully, have the ability to discuss them at the highest levels of the various players and arrive at positions to deal with problems that should assist greatly in relieving the tensions on the ground”.

Jamaica Broilers president, Robert Levy, explained that his company was thinking of selling the property when the EAC approached them.

“We saw an opportunity to earn some money and we decided to rent it for $1 million per month,” he said, but the EAC informed them that it did not have the money.

“So the board realised the important role the property could play in the fair and peaceful running of the election and … considered making the property available free, up to the time of running the (general) elections, and one month after the election,” Levy said.

Levy also used the occasion to support the EOJ’s call for election volunteers and pledged to again serve on election day.

Professor Miller thanked Jamaica Broilers for their “generous offer” which, he said, had set a good example for corporate Jamaica.

He said that many people have sat down and complained and raised all kinds of concerns but are not willing to do anything.

“This country will not be built by criticisms and complainers who stay in their living room and find all kinds of faults with what is wrong. It is going to be changed by persons who have the courage to come forward to set things right and do something about it,” Miller said.