PORTMORE, St Catherine:

A sergeant of police from the St Catherine South Police Division was arrested on Wednesday for alleged breaches of the Corruption Prevention Act. The policeman was arrested following a sting operation carried out by the Anti-Corruption Branch.

It is alleged that on January 29, the sergeant arrested a man for murder and later requested the accused to pay $500,000 for the charge to be dropped. This request was not honoured and the accused was charged with murder.

The sum requested by sergeant was later reduced to $200,000, with an agreement reached between the policeman and a relative of the accused for two equal payments to be made. The first payment was made after which a report was lodged with the Anti-Corruption Branch, resulting in the sting operation and the arrest of the sergeant.

The arrest of the sergeant for breaches of the Corruption Prevention Act was the 60th such arrest since the start of the year.

Tufton

"It is important that we recognise the beauty and greatness of the parish. Every modern society requires a development model, which emerges out of some vision," Tufton told the St Elizabeth Homecoming Foundation's Agriculture Expo on Thursday, November 19, at the Sharon Baptist Church in Santa Cruz.

He suggested that the foundation and stakeholders ask the question: 'what do we want St Elizabeth to become, or look like, in the next 15-20 years?'

"Some basic data are available to project things like population growth, housing development and types of infrastructure. We know that farming is a mainstay, but other sectors have emerged over time. Tourism is one of them," he said.

He noted that the parish has many natural resources, and their protection is paramount, or run the risk of some of the things that make the parish unique and different disappearing.

"We have to deliberately set out to protect, to preserve and enhance them, while maintaining the sort of originality that characterises the features," he emphasised.

- JIS News

MANDEVILLE, Manchester:

Parish Manager for the Social Development (SDC) in Manchester, Rose Griffiths, has called on community leaders to focus on the development of human capital, and not just on the physical development of communities.

"There is much more to community development than infrastructure. Very critical in this process is the human capital, or the people who live in the community. If you have all the infrastructure in the world, the best roads, best water supply, and public facilities and the people are not developed, we have a challenge," she argued.

Griffiths was addressing a joint meeting of the Swaby's Hope Citizens' Association and the Swaby's Hope New Testament Church of God on November 22 at the church.

The parish manager told the audience that the fact that the church and the community group could set aside a day in the month to deal with community issues meant that something good is happening. "I want to encourage you to keep up the good work, and help to rid our communities of selfishness," she said.

"The work that community leaders do is purely voluntary, and our role at the SDC is facilitatory. We come in and help to organise the community and, of necessity, we have to cover the parish, and despite the challenges we have to support community groups. We also recognise the work that community leaders undertake," Griffiths said.