Tyrone Reid, Staff Reporter
THE KINGSTON and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC), in tandem with the Public Health Department and the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), will be mobilising a mission to close down more than 200 illegal massage parlours across the Corporate Area.
The three stakeholders are to meet next week to finalise the details of the operation to pull the plug on the plethora of illegitimate parlours. This was revealed during the KSAC's monthly press briefing at its Church Street offices, downtown Kingston Tuesday. Desmond McKenzie, Mayor of Kingston indicated that ridding the municipality of these parlours is a priority for the council.
"We will be moving swiftly to close down these operations," he said. Among the parlours to be shut down is one which the Mayor claimed, is operating in close proximity to the Prime Minister's official Vale Royal residence.
INITIAL ATTEMPTS
"The Prime Minister's residence is being threatened by one such operation ...This is how bad it is," the Mayor stressed.
The Mayor revealed that the efforts of the KSAC to close down the illegal parlours are not new but initial attempts approximately two years ago received miniscule support. "When we started the crusade, we got no support from any other agency outside of the Public Health Department. Nobody paid us any mind."
Unfortunately, he said, it took a report from the United States to shed some light on the serious situation. "It took an international report coming outside of the U.S. that has now jerked this country and is now focussing attention on an issue that the KSAC has been grappling with for over two years."
RESPONSE TO REPORT
The Mayor told The Gleaner that while he could not give details on what happens in the parlours, his office has received reports that scores of condoms are frequently deposited at the gates of the parlours.
Unconfirmed reports are that under-aged girls are forced to work in these establishments. The 2005 Trafficking in Persons Report from the U.S. State Department, published last Friday, downgraded Jamaica from last year's assessment of tier two on its human trafficking watch list to the lowest assessment of tier three.
As a result, the island could be banned from receiving non-humanitarian and non-trade related assistance from the U.S. as of October this year.
However, the U.S. is currently working on an action plan with the Jamaican Government to address the problem.
