Residents of a St Catherine community, driven by their need to have a basic school to be built there by the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), outfoxed the local don who apparently wanted to extort the project.

According to Scarlette Gillings, managing director of the JSIF, the incident demonstrated that the strong will of law-abiding citizens is more powerful than influential inner-city dons.

Gillings was addressing reporters and editors during the Observer’s weekly Monday Exchange meeting yesterday at the newspaper’s Beechwood Avenue headquarters in Kingston.

“It happened in Gregory Park,” Gillings said, adding that the project was the Prophesy Basic School. “The community was intent on getting the basic school and the community outsmarted the don. The don disappeared.”

The JSIF, which was established over a decade ago, is mandated with putting to tender projects aimed at making the lives of the country’s poorest more comfortable.

Gillings said the fund is faced with several challenges working in inner-city communities but extortion by thugs based in those areas was not a hitch.

“If it reaches to that, then we close down the project,” Gillings said.

The fund was forced to temporarily close down the construction of a basic school in Blenhiem, Hanover after residents began harassing a contractor for work.

“The community came back to us and told us the children needed the school, so we resumed work,” Gillings said.

Under the fund’s Inner-City Basic Services for the Poor project, the communities of Whitfield Town, Jones Town, Federal Gardens and Brown’s Town in the Corporate Area; Tawes Pen, Gregory Park, Central Village, Shelter Rock and Nollis in St Catherine; Bucknor in Clarendon; and Flankers in St James have all benefited from various projects funded to the tune of US$32 million.

The JSIF has financed urban upgrading in the form of basic schools, community centres, sanitary facilities, electricity and water supplies, sewage treatment, roads and other infrastructural development.

According to Gillings, the improvement of social conditions in these communities had a positive effect on crime reduction.

“Places like Dunkirk, Tawes Pen and Jones Town are not hot spots anymore. That’s because we have been working in these communities since 1997,” Gillings said. “Crime is so complex. It starts from the family. Where are the fathers and the mothers? It starts at the basic school.”

Some of the inner-city projects which JSIF has funded include:

. A multi-purpose court in the 100 Lane/Park lane communities which run off Red Hills Road – $1.1 million;

. Rehabilitation of the Balmagie Primary School Playfield – $11.9 million;

. Rehabilitation and expansion of the Boys’ Town Basic School – $5.5 million;

. Rehabilitation and expansion of the Central Village Health Centre – $5.4 million; and

. Upgrading of sanitation in Whitfield Town.