ROSE HALL, St. James — President of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourism Association (JHTA) Omar Robinson has strongly objected to the call for the implementation of a state of emergency to arrest the crime wave across western Jamaica.

“We are not in agreement with a wholesale state of emergency. It’s for the police to find effective measures to solve the problems that we have. People have been calling for soldiers [but] there are soldiers out in some of the communities; the police need to get better intelligence,” Robinson stated.

His view was supported by the JHTA’s immediate past president Nicola Madden Greig.

“We have been through traumatic times over our history and unfortunately we have been faced with the reality of having to call for such a thing [state of emergency]. I think we always get nervous around these issues, not only tourism [interests] but Jamaica as a country.

“It does mean that there are suspension of your civil liberties and your rights and anyone would take that as something serious,” Madden Greig said.

The JHTA executives were responding to questions from the media following a tourism stakeholders’ meeting hosted by Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett at the Montego Bay Convention Centre, yesterday.

Speaking at a press conference held at the Freeport Police Station in Montego Bay over the weekend, in the wake of Friday’s triple murder in St James, Commissioner of Police Carl Williams argued that the problem affecting Montego Bay and St James, in particular, “are deep-seated and they are not going to be fixed by a state of emergency or any significant police action”.

He said: “They are social problems and they are going to have to be fixed socially,” the police commissioner remarked.

But, Government Senator Charles Sinclair thinks the police chief should hand in his resignation if he doesn’t think a state of emergency would be effective.

Sinclair, a former Montego Bay mayor, in a statement yesterday, said: “It is becoming clearer by the day that the commissioner of police is out of his depth” as he has misinterpreted the proposal for a state of emergency to help reduce crime in St James.

“For him to have interpreted the proposal to cauterise the runaway murder rate with a state of emergency to mean it being the panacea to fix the problem is disingenuous to say the least,” the senator said.

Meanwhile, Robinson suggested that if the private sector partners with the State assist with resources for the police it could help reduce the high crime rate.

“…So we want to take a public/private sector approach to see how best we can assist the police in helping them reduce the crime levels, but at this time we are not calling for a state of emergency and we are not calling for the resignation of the commissioner either,” said Robinson.

Sinclair, however, maintained that a state of emergency would reflect a policy decision of the Government, which would give additional powers and resources — human and otherwise — to the Jamaica Constabulary in the parish to cauterise the escalating murder rate in St James.

“At this moment there is a tremendous fear factor in the citizenry. Children are unable to go to school as they are afraid to cross the imaginary boundaries in communities; people are afraid to go out to church, resource and community centres cannot carry on programmes as participants are fearful in going out to the events. If it is not police action that restores calm and peace in the first instance and in the shortest possible time, I don’t know what else can do so,” he said.

Madden Greig, in the meantime, thinks that previous state of emergencies in Jamaica have had positive and negative results.

“I think a state of emergency always has controversy but there has been times in our history where it has been necessary to do so. Obviously there has been good and bad in it and it never should be done or called for in a light manner,” the immediate past president of the JHTA argued.