Garwin Davis, Staff Reporter
WESTERN BUREAU: WITH THE long-awaited Montego Bay street people report expected to be made public on Friday, residents of the resort city are not expressing much optimism in what the details will reveal.
Nurse Joy Crooks, an administrator at the Committee for the Upliftment of the Mentally Ill (CUMI), said yesterday if the information she has been privy to so far is any indication as to the actual conclusions drawn by the Commission of Enquiry, then she was "greatly disturbed".
"I am very disappointed in what I have been hearing," Mrs. Crooks said. "I don't have a lot of confidence in the things that are being proposed and frankly put, I am sceptical of the entire thing."
Mrs. Crooks said the government's proposed monthly stipend of $20,000 for the victims, and to be paid to them for the rest of their lives, should not be taken at face value.
"We have to understand how this country operates," she said. "Maybe everything will be okay for the first couple of months then, suddenly and without warning, you don't hear anything more about it."
Mrs. Crooks said if the Poor Relief Department was doing its work in the first place, the whole street people saga may not have happened and the victims wouldn't have had to suffer the indignity of "being dumped like garbage in a can".
Publisher Lloyd B. Smith, one of many witnesses who testified in front of the Commission and whose testimony implicated and embarrassed several of Montego Bay's most influential business leaders, shared similar sentiments.
According to Mr. Smith, the Commis-sion, after being in deliberation for more than four months, should have been able to point specifically to the guilty parties.
"While the Commission may not have had enough concrete evidence at its disposal there was enough, I believe, to indict the Parish Council," said Mr. Smith.
Businessman David Dixon feels indictments should have been recommended for the heads of several government departments because, according to him, they all had a role to play in the saga.
"Are we to believe that after four months of deliberations and millions of tax payers dollars, no charges can be brought forward against anybody? At least that is what the report seems to be suggesting."
Reverend George Simpson, who worked with the Commission throughout its deliberations, said it was not mandated to recommend any criminal wrongdoing to the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and conceded the evidence it had at its disposal was somewhat limited.
"The moment we handed over the report our job was completed," Rev. Simpson said. "I will not speak on the contents of the report as I feel that is inappropriate."
