'Government officials should have been charged' By Garwin Davis, Staff Reporter
CLAIMING THAT justice has not been served, a number of residents in Montego Bay are of the opinion that government officials should have been charged in the street people affair. The residents are incensed that nobody has been held responsible for the July 1999 forced removal of the street people, a scandal that rocked the second city and by extension, the nation. Some are even calling for a second commission of enquiry, noting that the previous commission did not go far enough in their deliberations. Nurse Joy Crooks, an administrator at the Committee for the Upliftment of the Mentally Ill (CUMI), said that what came out of last year's commission of enquiry was an insult to the intelligence of all Jamaicans and noted that once again a crime has gone unpunished in Jamaica. "I am very disappointed that the perpetrators of this sordid act continue to walk free," Mrs. Crooks said. "It is a travesty of justice and a national shame." Mrs. Crooks said that the government's proposed monthly stipend of $20,000 for the victims, and to be paid to them for the rest of their lives, has not been going well and that the money would have been better served by building shelters for homeless people across the island. Publisher Lloyd B. Smith, one of many witnesses to have testified in front of the commission and whose testimony implicated and embarrassed several of Montego Bay's most influential business leaders, share similar sentiments. According to Mr. Smith, in an earlier interview, the commission of enquiry, after being in deliberations for so long , should have been able to point specifically to the guilty person(s) behind what he called "this despicable act." Businessman David Dixon feels that 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 whole saga. "Are we to believe that after all this investigation involving millions of tax payers dollars, nobody has been held responsible for what happened?" he asked. Reverend George Simpson, who worked with the commission throughout its deliberations, said earlier that the commission was not mandated to recommend any criminal wrongdoing to the Department of Public Prosecution (DPP) and conceded that the evidence they had at their disposal was somewhat limited. "The moment we handed over the report our job was completed," Mr. Simpson said. "If people had come forward and testified as they should, the commission would have had more on which to go by." But Mrs. Crooks feels that if charges were brought against government heads then it would have forced them to reveal what they know. "The buck stops with the leaders of these organisations," she said. "Bring charges against them and see how fast they talk."
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