KINGSTON, Jamaica – Opposition Senator Lambert Brown on Friday hammered the Government on the issue of crime, in particular murders, charging that the Andrew Holness-led Administration has failed to keep Jamaicans safe.

Brown, who was making his contribution to the State of the Nation Debate in the Senate, was returning to the Upper House after several months recuperating from illness. He told his colleagues that he had a close brush with death and was thankful to be alive.

While his presentation was subdued, Brown was highly critical of the government over its management of the health and security portfolios. He recalled the problems he had getting a bed when he was to be admitted to hospital in September of last year.

“That state of the nation that leaves our people bed-less when they’re sick is not the best direction for our country, it needs to be changed,” said Brown who promised to be an advocate for that change.

Turning to crime, he pointed to a recent public opinion poll conducted by noted pollster Don Anderson which found that nearly 60 per cent of Jamaicans were living in fear.

“Imagine the drain that fear has…on ordinary citizens, the drain that fear has emotionally, financially, health wise and every other wise. We have to fix that, it is not a state of the nation that we can be proud of,” Brown remarked.

Like he has done often, Brown reminded of the promise made by Prime Minister Andrew Holness when he was Leader of the Opposition campaigning in the 2016 general election.

At the time, Holness promised that a Jamaica Labour Party Government would ensure that Jamaicans were able to sleep with their windows and doors open and wake up alive the next morning.

“In other words [Holness was saying] crime and the murder rate would go down if you voted for his party. He said then that  a lot can be down to cut the murder rate, those were nice promises, people believed him then,” said Brown.

He said the reality is that “the murder figures since I have been a member of this Senate tell a story where my best years in this Senate relative to murder figures were between 2012 and 2015. The numbers were way lower”.

Of note is that Senator Peter Bunting who currently serves as Leader of Opposition Business in the Senate was the Minister of National Security between 2012 and 2016 when the People’s National Party last formed the Government.

Brown argued that a lower homicide rate was achieved with far less resources than are available to the current administration. He pointed out that every year of the JLP administration has seen a higher murder toll than the 1,208 that was the highest murder rate recorded in a single year when Bunting was in charge of the security portfolio.