ROSE HALL, St James — National Security Minister Robert Montague says he was specially picked by God to tackle the crime monster on the prowl in Jamaica.

“I have been truly blessed and I cannot deny that I have been blessed. Many of us will prefer, and can, like experts, tell us what is wrong and we can complain and we can find fault; but I am blessed. I am specially chosen by my God to be here to confront what confronts Jamaica and I am confident that with the prayer of everyone, we will overcome,” Montague stated.

“Many persons will tell you that we face serious times. But I don’t tell God how big my problems are, I tell my problems how great my God is.”

He was addressing the Jamaica Christian Diaspora Conference held at the Iberostar Rose Hall Resorts in St James on Friday.

Noting that the crime problem existed long before the Jamaica Labour Party formed the current Administration, the security minister however argued that with political will, it can be successfully addressed.

“We are here where we are and it took a long time to get here and it is not going to be easy to leave here. But we will leave here. It is not going to be overnight, it is not going to be instant, but it is going to take unity, hard work, a political will, and a belief in what is good about Jamaica,” Montague said.

“The spate of crime in Jamaica did not start last night, did not start last week, and it certainly, members of the press, did not start on the 25th of February 2016.”

He bemoaned that despite the trending down of other crimes, the Jamaican culture of measuring the crime index is by the number of murders.

“No matter what the levels of crime go down, we don’t see it if murders are up because we count crime by the murder index. So in all the other categories of crime trending down, but murder is two per cent up and that is what we as Jamaicans use as the index and we have to confront it,” Montague argued.