Thomas THE GOVERNMENT needs to quickly establish an anti-extortion police unit, says National Housing Trust (NHT) chairman Kingsley Thomas.
Extortion now permeates the economy, affecting even the biggest projects of the country, Mr. Thomas said yesterday at the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) job creation awards ceremony at the Terra Nova All-Suite Hotel in St. Andrew.
"The establishment of an anti-extortion specialist squad is urgently needed at this time," Mr. Thomas said. It should be equipped with, "the necessary resources and intelligence gathering capabilities to carry out 'sting' operations", he said.
A 'sting' operation involves the use of undercover officers working to gain the confidence of criminals to gather information on their operations. This information is then used as the basis of police action to disrupt their work.
PSOJ president Oliver Clarke had similar concerns about the extortion racket.
"One of the things which is damaging economic growth is the rapid escalation of efforts to extort from business, both big and small," he said, adding that this was a situation which must be halted.
Jamaica will get rid of crime, "when every citizen believes they are going to work with the security forces to get rid of the scamps", Mr. Clarke said.
According to Mr. Thomas, the problem was being perpetrated by "criminal parasites who are not interested in work", and has now reached "frightening" proportions. Extortion needs to be tackled "urgently and decisively", Mr. Thomas said.
"We have a situation on a project with which I am associated, where every truck that takes marl from a quarry to a site is being hijacked by criminals at night," Mr. Thomas said. The criminals, "are asking $300 for every truck as protection money".
Businesses of all sizes and descriptions are being subjected to this plague, Mr. Thomas said. Failure by businessmen to yield to the extortion is met with, "violent, ruthless action".
There are those who comply, "out of fear", Mr. Thomas said. This leads to a level of acceptance of the problem.
Gaudia Chevannes, managing director of Spa Aesthetique who was presented with the small business award for job creation at the PSOJ function, noted that after dealing with high security costs, companies still had "to deal with these thugs and personalities".
"Extortion is such an issue especially for small businesses as we already spend so much money on security," she said.
