KINGSTON, Jamaica —Just hours after police warned the public not to attend the Maroon Festival in St Elizabeth on Thursday as it would be in breach of the Disaster Risk Management Act, Colonel Richard Currie has announced that the event will go on as planned.

The announcement was made on his Instagram account this morning where he invited maroons to continue their spiritual and traditional ceremonies as their ancestors did.

Currie said the Maroon Festival should be compared to other religious events such as the pilgrimage to Mecca where Muslims from around the world get a chance to circle the Kabba.

“This is a religious duty of Maroons to honour our ancestors and to show the way forward for the born and the unborn. This is our way of life! Maroons stand unified on this day,” he wrote in the post.

On Wednesday, the police warned the public not to attend the event as it will constitute a breach of the COVID-19 regulations.

Read: Police warn public not to attend planned Accompong event

However, members of the public have been pointing to the “unfairness” among police as on Friday, December 31, a traffic pile-up on Waltham Park Road in Kingston, due to Romeich Major’s ‘New Year’s Bottle Par’ which breached several regulations under the Disaster Risk Management Act was not shut down by officers patrolling the community, who instead directed the traffic in the area.

Read: A stray bullet, order downtown, and Waltham woes mark new year