KINGSTON, Jamaica — Leader of the Opposition, Dr Peter Phillips, says his People’s National Party’s (PNP) decision to host a summit on crime in Kingston, was due to the failure of Government’s efforts to reduce murders.

“We decided to convene this stakeholders meeting because it is evident that, despite the declaration of seven states of emergency (SOEs) in separate police divisions, plus two zones of special operations (ZOSOs, in just over two years there is still no sign of any sustained reduction in the levels of murder or violent crimes,” Dr Phillips told the summit at the Jamaica Conference Centre Tuesday.

He noted that the international benchmark for murders for civil war conditions has been 30 per 100,000 population, while Jamaica’s murder rate is 46 per 100,000.

“This put us in a category of high crime countries, like El Salvador and Lesotho,” the Opposition leader remarked.

He said, however, that the murders have been a major problem hanging around for some time, and has been doubling with every decade.

Dr Phillips said that the cost to the economy of Jamaica’s high level of crimes is between five per cent and nine per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP).

“There is no doubt that one of the effects of crime, is to suppress our capacity to perform better economically as a country,” he argued.

“I think that what flows from this is that there ought to be a clear cut acceptance, that any solution must be necessarily multi-faceted,” he added.                                                        

Balford Henry