The Hear the Children’s Cry Committee and the St Mary Chamber of Commerce, Agriculture and Industry are in full support of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica’s (PSOJ) three-day initiative, including the shutdown of commercial activities islandwide tomorrow to protest against rising crime.

“We the members of the Hear The Children’s Cry Committee know that the concerns of the PSOJ and its supporters lie with the children, just as ours do, because at the root of Jamaica’s problems lies the plight of our children and our families,” said convenor Betty Ann Blaine. “We are therefore going to throw our support, and that of our constituency of young people, behind the PSOJ’s three-day initiative.

“We are calling on all Jamaicans who are fed up with what is going on, and who are concerned about our children, to come out now and unite, particularly in the interest of our youngsters and their families,” she said.

The PSOJ announced its plan five days after 70-year-old businessman Maurice Azan and his 50-year-old stepson Lloyd Phang were gunned down inside Azan’s wholesale and supermarket in May Pen, Clarendon on May 14.

Their deaths followed the co-ordinated murders of three policemen within the space of a few hours between May 3 and 4. One of the cops died in a brazen gun attack on the Cross Roads Police Station.

The three-day PSOJ initiative includes a memorial rally at emancipation Park in New Kingston tomorrow where the names of the more than 600 persons murdered so far this year will be read out.

Blaine, in her statement, offered condolences to the Azan and Phang families and declared the Committee’s continued support for the police.

St Mary Chamber of Commerce, Agriculture and Industry president Frederick Young said his organisation was calling on all businesses in that parish to join the initiative and close tomorrow.

“We strongly believe that all law-abiding Jamaicans should make their voices heard in this serious national issue,” Young told the Observer Sunday night.

All Jamaicans, he said, had a role to play, as there is need for national consensus to fight crime.

“Crime has no middle ground,” said Young. “You’re either for or against it.”

He also said that the Chamber strongly believed that hanging should be resumed as a deterrent to crime.

But CEO of the Hydel group of schools, Hyacinth Bennett, while expressing condolences to the families of the slain businessmen, chided the PSOJ for remaining silent when other Jamaicans were brutally killed.

According to Bennett, the PSOJ was mute when Janice Allen and Michael Gayle were killed by agents of the state and also when Agana Barrett suffocated to death in an overcrowded prison cell at the Constant Spring Police Station some years ago.

“Indeed, when dozens of Montego Bay street people were rounded up, herded into trucks like common cattle and then dumped, they (the PSOJ) lamented not,” said Bennett, a former president of the National Democratic Movement.

“More recently, when that six-year-old girl was abducted, subjected to the most brutal rape. the PSOJ expressed no pain, made no protest, shut down no businesses, what hypocrisy,” Bennett lamented.

The PSOJ’s self interest, she said, has blinded them to some of the real contributory factors to crime in the country.

“Undeniably, the PSOJ has profited greatly from the policies which have transferred massive wealth from the poor, thereby resulting in the impoverishment of the majority of our people,” said Bennett.

“What does the PSOJ have to say about the stench of corruption enveloping our nation, as billions of dollars flow into the bank accounts of the genetically linked? Why is the PSOJ deafeningly silent on the National Solid Waste and Sandals Whitehouse scandals?” she asked.

“We need a fundamental change in the direction of the disastrous policies being executed. Indeed, policies are needed urgently to bring hope, relief, upward social mobility and prosperity to all Jamaicans.”