The Opposition affiliated group, Generation 2000 (G2K), said yesterday that 70 per cent of Jamaica’s 172 police stations are in disrepair and would require about $4 billion to fix.

The government could find the money to undertake the job, G2K said, from the savings to be gained from the PetroCaribe facility, under which Jamaica will pay cash for 60 per cent of the oil it buys from Venezuela, with the other 40 per cent being converted to long-term loans at interest as low as one per cent. The island is expected to save up to US$180 million (J$11.52 billion).

The Jamaica Labour Party group, which is made up of young professionals, also suggested that the government use the proceeds from the sale of additional mobile telephone licences to purchase technological aids for the police, such as the much-touted computer-based statistics analysis software and related hardware, CompuStat as well as a new radio communications system, to replace the one that has been in use since the 1980s.

The police radio system, G2K vice-president, Warren Newby told reporters, is now “gross inefficient to deal with the demands of the current crime wave”.

The government recently received bids for a mobile phone licence that was given back by America’s Cingular. However, experts say the government is unlikely to fetch the big bucks it received when it first auctioned cellular licences at the start of the decade.The government got US$90 million for the first two licences it sold and earned US$6 million for the third.

G2K’s proposal came as it announced the findings of a recent audit of police stations, whose decrepit state, the organisation said, helped impede the ability of the constabulary to fight Jamaica’s serious crime problem.

“G2K’s audit of the state of police stations across the island indicates a range of problems, from a need for totally new structures in Bath, St Thomas, Cave Valley and Alexander in St Ann, Falmouth, Trelawny and Port Maria in St Mary; to leaking roofs in Admiral Town, Rollington Town and Rockfort in Kingston; to an inadequacy furniture at the newly-built Annotto Bay station in St Mary,” Newby said.

At least 120 stations were in need of substantial repair.

“Preliminary estimates indicate that some $4 billion will be needed to overhaul the physical facilities of the police force and given the priority which must be placed on crime fighting, the organisation is calling on government to make this ($4 billion) a priority,” Newby said.

G2K leader, Senator Chris Tufton, said the audit was done to emphasise the problems faced by the police in tackling crime in a country where there were nearly 1,700 murders last year and to show his organisation’s concern for the problem.

Responding to the observation that some police stations were being repaired, Tufton charged that government has in the past announced plans to build and repair stations without anything being done.

“We are not impressed with intentions to perform we are interested in performance,” Tufton said. “The question is, what is the government doing about it?. The equipment of police stations is fundamental as you can get.”