St Mary chamber offers support to police, stakeholders to further reduce crime rate
Published:Sunday | January 5, 2020 | 12:00 AMCarl Gilchrist /Gleaner Writer
Even though there was a slight decrease in the murder figures in 2019, the St Mary Chamber of Commerce says it will start working with the police and other stakeholders to ensure that there is a further reduction this year.
In 2017, there were 24 murders in St Mary. The figure jumped to 36 in 2018 before settling at 30 last year, thanks mainly to increased police intervention.
One such move was the “A Nicer Bay” initiative, aimed at making Annotto Bay, which experienced a spike in serious crimes, a nicer town.
But president of the chamber, Frederick Young, believes more needs to be done as the murder figure is still too high and so he has offered the assistance of his organisation to arrive at solutions to combat the problem.
“Twenty murders in 2019, slightly less than the previous year but what we see as a concern is domestic violence seems to be on the rise, where persons are not reasoning out things, they are more trying to create mayhem by applying violent ways to deal with the problem,” Young explained.
“The chamber is ready to work with the police and other stakeholders to see if we can come to some solution, maybe go into the schools to talk to the students from an early stage to really guide them into positive thinking, positive outcomes rather than thinking about violence even at their young stage,” he added
Young said the idea of the chamber working with the police to reduce crime is to make St Mary a safer and more productive parish and also a place where people will want to grow, to live and to do business.
Meanwhile, the St Mary chamber boss said business was flat during 2019.
However, he pointed to few positive developments such as the establishment of the parish’s first business process outsourcing (BPO) company, NK Customer Solutions Limited, that began operating in Annotto Bay in October.
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