CHRISTIANA, Manchester — Opposition spokesperson on national security, Senator Peter Bunting, is questioning the proliferation of used car marts in Manchester amid concerns that money laundering and lottery scamming are factors in murders here.

“Why does greater Mandeville, from Williamsfield to Spur Tree, have more car lots than anywhere in Jamaica? Every time you see a little piece of land cleared you can guess it is a car lot. Why is it that greater Mandeville is the centre for used car sales in Jamaica? I think we have more car lots than Kingston and St Andrew, St Catherine, St James, anywhere in Jamaica. Why do you think that is?” Bunting asked during a community meeting in Christiana on Wednesday night.

The meeting was held at the Christiana Moravian Primary and Infant School where Cuthbert Lambert, 27, was gunned down at the gate last Friday.

Bunting was quick to point out that there are legitimate used car dealers in Manchester, even as he raised concern about the number and possible link to illegal activities by some of the operators.

“I don’t want to generalise, because sometimes when you [do] you can paint legitimate businesspersons in the wrong light, so I never like to do anything that paints everybody, because you can have legitimate businesspeople in a particular line of business and then suddenly they find themselves struggling to compete with the illegitimate ones, so you have to be careful how you paint everybody with the same brush,” added Bunting as he alleged that money laundering and lottery scamming are fuelling the proliferation of used car marts.

“A lot of money laundering is involved. Illicit funds, whether from scamming, drugs dealing, whatever, is being laundered through many of these lots, and the people know, it is not a secret. I am not revealing anything that is not well known,” said Bunting.

He charged that lottery scamming has infiltrated the usually peaceful south central parish.

“Scamming has become ubiquitous in Manchester. Every little community now. I mean up in the Bellefield Hills, in south Manchester and north-east Manchester. I don’t think there is anywhere that has phone signal that somebody not chopping the line [scamming],” he said while adding that scamming is accepted by some citizens while others are fearful of the repercussions for speaking against it.

“Invariably, some people [are] ambivalent about it, because there is so much money that runs through it that people are afraid, politicians are afraid to speak out about it, because they say, ‘If all that money turns against me in an election then dog nyam mi supper,’ but there are a few courageous politicians who are not afraid to speak truth,” said Bunting, a former minister of security under a People’s National Party Administration.

He compared the increase in crime in Manchester to national figures and argued that the parish is in trouble.

“On average [nationally] murders are down 16 per cent and shootings are down three per cent, it is not just the absolute numbers, but relative to the rest of Jamaica, something is happening here [Manchester] that is causing a relative deterioration relative to even the rest of Jamaica,” said Bunting.

Five people were murdered in Manchester over a seven-day period recently, with at least four people wounded in shootings.

Official figures from the police show 37 murders in Manchester up to September 7, an almost 28 per cent increase over the 29 recorded for the same period last year. The parish has also recorded 29 shootings, 21 per cent above last year.