Finance sector rejects crisis claim

KEY financial sector officials last Sunday rejected that Jamaica’s banks and finance houses are heading for a 1990s-style meltdown and warned doomsayers against creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“There is no truth to the suggestion that there is a crisis in the financial sector,” Finance Minister Omar Davies told the Observer. “The regulatory authorities are on top of the issues in the sector. It is something that they monitor on an ongoing basis and I am assured that there is no basis for claiming there is a crisis.”

Summit yields action plan

WESTERN BUREAU — Government and private sector leaders emerged from three days of talks at the Ritz Carlton Rose Hall in Montego Bay last Sunday and identified tourism, information technology, manufacturing and construction as the sectors to receive special attention to kick-start the economy.

At the same time, both sides said they had built an action plan to stimulate investment around two primary conditions — the reduction of crime, violence and praedial larceny; and a reduction in the cost of capital.

Churches maintain opposition to casinos

LOCAL church leaders are sticking to their long-held opposition to the introduction of casino gambling here, after the issue was raised again during a three-day summit between the Government and private sector leaders last weekend.

“The church would take its stand as per usual,” said Bishop Herro Blair, pastor of the Deliverance Evangelistic Centre. “This is a moral issue and the prime minister has already given [us] his assurance and we believe that he will not go back on his words.”

DPP withdraws case against Peralto, Wallace

THE Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) on Monday withdrew its case against Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) chairman, Senator Ryan Peralto and former JLP Senator Brian Wallace, who were charged with breaches of the Parliament (Integrity of Members) Act for failing to submit their annual financial statements, while they were members of the Senate.

But they have been warned that should they breach the law on a second occasion, even if they file their declarations late, they could once again be brought before the courts.

Local vote delayed

Prime Minister PJ Patterson on Tuesday announced a third postponement of the local government elections, which were scheduled to be held by month-end. The polls, he told Parliament, will now be held by June 30 this year.

Patterson told Parliament Tuesday that the latest postponement was to allow for a further reform of local government, including the passage of a law to allow Portmore, St Catherine to be declared a municipality and a directly elected mayor.

PM urges citizens to report acts of corruption

PRIME Minister P J Patterson on Tuesday urged citizens to replace whispered rumours of corruption, with official reports to the newly launched Corruption Prevention Commission, as he reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to lead the charge to stomp out corrupt activities across the island.

“We have a habit in Jamaica, of whispering things on verandahs and saying everybody knows this and everybody knows that; and when a body is established to hear evidence nobody is prepared to come forward,” the prime minister said at the commission’s launch at the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston. “This commission is an invitation for everybody in Jamaica who know about corruption to speak up, to stand up and be counted, to help us eliminate corruption once and for all in our country.”

Alfred Nettleford gets first $1 million

ALFRED Nettleford, 78, got the first instalment Wednesday of a $9-million settlement with the Government — compensation for being mistakenly imprisoned at the Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre in Kingston for 28 years.

In 1972, police accused Nettleford of throwing a rock through a bank’s window in Clarendon. A judge sent the tailor and former factory worker to Bellevue Mental Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. Nettleford, however, become “lost in the system” and never returned to face charges, although a doctor had pronounced him fit to plea, said Nancy Anderson, a legal officer with the Independent Jamaica Council for Human Rights.

Air J cuts 25 execs

AIR Jamaica on Thursday chopped 25 senior executive and management positions, as well as four non-managerial posts in a cost-cutting measure the national carrier says was triggered by a deepening crisis in the world airline industry and the impending Gulf war.

“The positions of two vice-presidents, seven departmental directors, two senior managers, 14 other management staff and for non-management staff have been eliminated with immediate effect,” Air Jamaica said in a statement Thursday.

OUR tells JPSCo to adjust billing system

THE Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) has given the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPSCo) until June 30 to adjust its billing system, which in recent times has resulted in a slew of complaints from consumers who were sent spiralling electricity bills.

The OUR’s directive was issued on Friday after investigations into billing problems that surfaced shortly after the light and power company commissioned its Customer Information System (CIS) last September.

Cry for justice — two years after killing of 7 at Braeton

ABOUT 20 placard-bearing demonstrators of various citizens’ rights groups Friday protested outside the offices of the Ministry of National Security in Kingston, demanding justice for the March 14, 2001 killing of seven young men by police in Braeton, St Catherine.

The seven, aged between 15 and 20 years, were killed in what the police claimed was a shoot-out in the St Catherine community.

…Amnesty vows to obtain justice for Braeton 7

Amnesty International on Thursday called Jamaica’s investigation into the “Braeton Seven” shootings “deeply flawed”, and pledged to help the victims’ families lodge complaints before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Piers Bannister, a researcher for the London-based human rights watchdog, criticised authorities for failing to prosecute a single police officer in the controversial case, even though evidence “overwhelmingly points to the young men having being extrajudicially executed”.

The Government had a day earlier fired a blistering attack on Amnesty International, accusing the human rights watchdog of producing an unfair and offensive critique of its human rights record.