CHAIRMAN of the House of Representatives’ Internal and External Affairs Committee (IEAC), Derrick Smith, says that he expects Commissioner of Police Dr Carl Williams and his team to meet with the committee at Gordon House on Tuesday, November 10.

“I expect if we ask the commissioner to come to our meeting on November 10, that he needs to come on November 10. This is a parliamentary committee,” Smith, who is also leader of Opposition business in the House and Opposition spokesman on national security, told the Jamaica Observer on Wednesday.

This follows the decision of the committee at their meeting at Gordon House on Tuesday morning, at which members agreed with a proposal from Smith to summon the commissioner and his team to discuss the current murder figures.

“He needs to tell us what is going on, what are the challenges the police are facing,” Smith told the Observer.

“We are only in October and the murder rate has already passed the 2014 figure,” Smith said, noting that while 1,005 murders occurred in 2014, the latest figure for 2015 is 1,007.

He said that murders were spiralling out of control and, as chairman of the IEAC, he felt that it was necessary for the committee to ask Dr Williams and other members of the high command to inform the members of the challenges and efforts to stem the criminality now engulfing the country.

Smith said it was disheartening to note that, while the country observed National Heritage Week last week, some 36 Jamaicans were murdered, “leaving their families and communities crippled by intolerable crime and violence”.

“There seems to be no letting up in the current wave of mayhem and murder in our society,” he stated.

He said that the latest murder figure represents a 26 per cent increase, or 211 more murders than the figure for the corresponding period last year.

“I have an obligation, as chairman of Parliament’s Internal/External Affairs Committee, to promote optimal levels of performance and accountability on the part of key agents of the State charged with ensuring a safer and more peaceful society,” Smith said.

“I therefore deem it critically important to have the police commissioner and his team account to the nation, by reporting to the Internal/External Affairs Committee on efforts to curtail the growing increase in murders and explaining their plan to effectively manage crime in Jamaica,” he added.

The IEAC will next meet on November 3, when it is expected to conclude its review of the private members’ motion moved by government Member of Parliament Raymond Pryce (Manchester North East) to have the finances of non-governmental and civil society organisations regulated by government.

— Balford Henry