Some 2,000 murders have been recorded since the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) administration formed the government less than two years ago. We have had three ministers of national security and our problem of crime continues unabated.

We urgently need to look at setting up a civilian police force under which would fall the Port Security Corps, Transport Authority, a new Praedial Larceny Corps and Traffic Enforcement Team, motor vehicle examination depots and Customs Department. Many of these bodies are not working as effectively as they could and should fall under the direction of an action-oriented person like Daryl Vaz, under a new agency known as the Social Renewal Task Force and headed by Danville Walker, who would work closely with Joan Gordon-Webley at the National Solid Waste Management Authority.

Redesign our inner cities

Prime Minister Bruce Golding needs to take a direct, hands-on approach to this problem. City planners need to be working on a 24-hour rotation to redesign our inner cities to build major roads through them and open them up and beautify them, so that motorists and the citizens living there will see peace and tranquillity.

We probably have to impose a temporary police state to arrest this crime situation. We must move our young men who hang out on the streets into the military, HEART Trust/NTA or the National Youth Service. The People's National Party should not feel that they have been absolved from the crime situation. On the contrary, they are responsible for the blight and decay throughout their 18 years of (mis) governing the country. My disappointment, however, is that the JLP, which had that same amount of time to study the problem, has come out of the starting blocks, stumbling and falling on its face, or floating like a rudderless ship.

The Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica should not wait until another of its prominent member is killed before marching again and to say once more that they did not know that people lived in the squalid conditions that exist in some inner-city communities.

I am, etc.,

SHAWN JOHNSON

jamaicanshawn@yahoo.com