Accompong, St Elizabeth – The Accompong Maroons will elect new leaders by the end of March, under the watchful eyes of the Electoral Office of Jamaica.

Speaking at Tuesday’s 266th anniversary of the signing of the Peace Treaty between the Maroons and the British, current leader Colonel Sydney Peddie said the EOJ would soon be asked to begin the enumeration process.

He added that while the elections had been due from last December, a change in leadership at that time would not have given the newly-elected colonel enough time to prepare for the anniversary celebrations.

According to Observer sources, Peddie will be challenged by former colonel, Merdie Rowe, for the leadership of the Accompong Maroons.

Meanwhile, the Accompong Maroon Council, Peddie said, had decided that all candidates vying for the position of colonel must reside in the Maroon village and that voting would not be allowed outside the village.

“The people who live in Accompong will not allow outsiders to decide who governs the affairs of the village, as they are not the ones who will have to plan activities and face the many problems within the community,” Colonel Peddie told the Observer.

He also argued that a colonel living within the village would have a better chance to fully understand and communicate with the members of the community.

And turning to another matter of importance to the Maroons, Peddie blasted the National Works Agency (NWA) and the National Water Commission (NWC) for what he said was their failure to respectively provide adequate roads and water supply to the Accompong Maroons.

Work, he said, started on the Retirement to Accompong road last year, but was abruptly halted by the sub-contractor. When contacted, he explained, the contractor could not say when work would resume and the NWA had been of little help to get the work restarted.

On the matter of water, Colonel Peddie said the NWC had frequently been asked to improve its delivery of water to the community but, to date, very little had been achieved. He told the Observer that the Accompong Maroons would be writing to the relevant ministries to seek their intervention.

In the meantime, he said, he would also try to have the road from Cedar Spring to the Village repaired as it was in a deplorable state and still had to be used by residents.