Three high-ranking members of the police force, the media and academia, have taken the Government to task and are insisting it should sever ties with businesses affiliated with gangs by not awarding them contracts.

Head of Operation Kingfish, Assistant Commissioner of Police Glenmore Hinds; Desmond Richards, president of the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ); and Professor Anthony Harriott, lecturer in the Department of Government at the University of the West Indies, made the suggestion yesterday as they put forward recommendations on how gangs can be dismantled.

ACP Hinds first put forward the recommendation while making a presentation at a roundtable talk on 'Guns, Gangs and Governance (G3)', organised by the United States Agency for International Development, in collaboration with Florida Association for Volunteer Action in the Caribbean and the Americas, at the Hilton Kingston hotel.

"We must consciously seek to starve criminal gangs of funding and one way of doing this is to ensure that the benefits don't come in contracts," Hinds said. "I know of many instances where these gangs benefit from Government contracts."

Mr. Richards said taxpayers should put the issue on the table, especially in light of an upcoming general election.

"I think we are too passive on these matters, and we are right in a season when these questions, I think, should be put on the table," the PAJ president said. "We must question thosewho are vying for power. We must put on the table, how we allow contracts to be given to companies with shady characters."

Find ways of cutting contracts

In endorsing the comments made earlier by both men, Professor Harriott said the Government should find ways of cutting these contracts.

"We have to find ways of severing that by tightening up the contract system, ensuring that there is accountability and so forth," he said.

When members of the audience pressed ACP Hinds on why no action was being taken against businesses that are linked to organised crime, he said that, while the police had intelligence on some of these companies, they did not have enough hard evidence to press charges.

He, however, insisted that when the Government is awarding contracts, it could use this intelligence information to make its decisions.