Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader, Prime Minister Andrew Holness has vowed one day to fulfill the promise that Jamaicans will sleep with their windows and doors open.

With murders and other crimes trending down, Holness told Labourites in Spanish Town, St Catherine on Sunday night that his election promise is close to being fulfilled.

“In 2016, I stood at a meeting in St James just outside of where we now have the ZOSO (zones of special operations) in Mount Salem, and I made a presentation. I said, ‘I want Jamaicans to be able to sleep with their windows and doors open’, and people ridiculed the statement,” Holness recounted.

“But I know what God has in store for this country. I don’t set my hat where I can reach it. I’m always stretching, pushing the boundaries because I have nothing else. I was never given an inheritance. My mother is here; she can testify to that. Everything that we have achieved in life is because we have worked hard, honestly and earnestly for it, and we stretch for it,” he continued.

“And it is the ambition to achieve peace in Jamaica why I made that ambitious statement that Jamaicans must have peace so we can sleep with our windows and doors open, and by God, we are going to achieve it in this country! We are going to achieve it,” Holness declared.

In three years, he said the murder rate has been cut by 55 per cent, noting that some people thought it was never possible but the JLP-led government accomplished it through ZOSOs.

“Tell me one community in Jamaica that is now at war with another community?… Tell me one,” Holness asked  the audience. He said states of emergency (SOEs) were also used to drive down the murder rate, as well as an investment of over $90 billion in the capital budget of the island’s security forces.