JAMAICA IS to get nearly one million pounds sterling (J$78 million) in additional assistance from the British government to cut the drug transhipment pipeline running through this country.
British Customs and Excise Minister John Healey praised the effort by Jamaica to reduce the flow of drugs into the United Kingdom, and pledged more support for the bilateral programme.
At a news conference at Customs House in London, following a meeting with Dr. Peter Phillips, Jamaica's Minister of National Security, Mr. Healey said that close to 1 million pound sterling, more officers and new scanning equipment for the airports would be made available to the programme.
"We will increase the number of officers available to Jamaica to support the efforts over there," a JIS report quotes Mr. Healey.
"We will introduce new scanners at Jamaican airports that will allow us to detect more of the drugs destined for the UK, and we will also increase financing by nearly a million pounds."
Mags White, press officer at the British High Commission in Kingston, told The Gleaner that the overall assistance to Jamaica was "staggering." She said the ongoing police modernisation project alone got five million pounds (J$391 million) over three years.
The amount of assistance Jamaica gets is "definitely increasing," she said. "Particularly over the last two years there has been a major leap."
Dr. Phillips said at the London press conference, held during his five-day visit to the UK to boost security links between the two states, that the programme of co-operation was showing results.
"What has been demonstrated is the fact that successes are possible and the project has generated much success in Jamaica and in the UK, in cutting off one particular route," Mr. Phillips said.
"I have committed the Government of Jamaica to extending this programme of co-operation and to extending the Memorandum Of Under-standing, making it open ended without any cut off date."
Jamaica now wants to explore ways of tackling illegal guns and other associated issues of criminality affecting the island, Dr. Phillips said.
"We now need to build on this platform of co-operation that has been established to ensure even closer operational collaboration and co-ordination."
The ultimate objective is to target international criminal networks behind the drug trade, he said.
Overall, British assistance goes to the police, Customs, and the Jamaica Defence Force, as well as to provide overall training, Ms. White said.
