MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Mandeville’s first citizen believes now is an opportune time for the proposed development of entertainment zones in Manchester.

Mayor Donovan Mitchell’s suggestion follows recent restriction imposed by the police on entertainment events in six communities that are prone to violence.

“People have other ways of going around the situation and this would give rise to the matter of entertainment zones as to where they will be, because this is now a ripe time for us to look at the zones for the parish,” Mitchell said at last Thursday’s meeting of the Manchester Municipal Corporation.

Four of the communities — Comfort, Broadleaf, Heartease, and Newhall — are within the Royal Flat Division represented by the mayor.

The other two communities are May Day and Greenvale.

Head of the Manchester police, Superintendent Lloyd Darby told a Manchester Chamber of Commerce town hall meeting at Manchester Golf Club on April 7 that the communities are plagued by violence and, as such, the police “will not be accepting applications for [entertainment activities] in those areas”.

But Mitchell said he has been getting calls from residents and promoters from his division for the hosting of entertainment events.

“I have not had a one-to-one with the superintendent in terms of what would have given rise to this, but one would have to understand that they would have had the statistics to determine whether or not such events will be allowed to be held,” said Mitchell.

“The situation, though, is that I have gotten some calls from these areas and I have asked them to just hold strain and to just understand,” he added.

He said a plan is being devised to have greater social work in the communities.

“We are going to be having a meeting with the Social Development Commission [SDC] because I think the situation that is giving us this problem is [crime], and I think there is the need to have some social intervention in these communities,” he said.

“We need to have the justices of the peace, Northern Caribbean University, more of the police and the citizens sitting down to have discussion as to some of the things which are happening,” he added.

He said other communities which have not been blacklisted have, in recent weeks, seen murders at events.

“George’s Valley is not on it but in one of those areas one gentleman was fatally shot at a candlelight ceremony they were having for another person, and so we have to be cognisant of people’s lives,” he said.

“If you are looking in some areas that it is happening, innocent people get shot and even passers-by and so the police would have been able to look at their statistics,” he added.

He said there is unease in the Broadleaf area as some people are complaining that the entire community should not have been restricted, but this was done because of problems in nearby Brown’s Town.

He said despite the restrictions, people have generally not adhered to the measures.

“The truth is that a number of people have been having events, even during COVID time, that had no permission,” he said.

Added the mayor: “Some people have asked if they can host day events instead of night events, because I think it is the problem of the night events that is creating the issue.

“We will have a meeting with the police and SDC and the chairmen of these community development committees to look at the way forward.”

Meanwhile, Mitchell said over the last two years, during the restrictions under the now-lifted Disaster Risk Management Act (DRMA), the local municipality’s revenue fell dramatically.

“During the COVID period revenue fell in those areas by about 90 per cent. It will still impact but we have to look at how we manage it because, as we said before, the lives of the people would take precedence over money,” he said.

He dispelled claims that communities are being stigmatised as violence-prone areas.

He pointed to a study done by social anthropologist Dr Herbert Gayle which highlighted poverty and domestic disputes in “communities within Manchester that are prone to violence and have some serious social issues”.