Ongoing support will be provided for families and children who have been affected by the fire that destroyed houses in the community of Gregory Park, in St Catherine, on Saturday.
Eleven homes were firebombed in the area, leaving some 40 persons homeless. One of the residents sustained burns all over her body and is in hospital, while one person was shot and killed by the gunmen.
During a tour of the affected area on Monday, Prime Minister Andrew Holness, said there will be social intervention to support the mental health of the residents.
“That will be mobilised particularly because a large number of the residents are children, and they have to go back to school. This is inexplicable for a young child to experience this trauma. You can never tell how they would grow up and internalise it, and what we don’t want is for them to internalise this and have a vengeful heart, so we have to have the social intervention very quickly,” the prime minister said.
He further noted that the Government will provide back-to-school supplies for the families who have been displaced, so that children will be able to return to school.
“I also gave the commitment that the 11 houses/structures that were destroyed will be replaced. If the objective of the terrorists is to displace the people here so that they could possibly import who they want into the area, they will not have that victory,” Holness declared.
“We will rebuild the structures that people who are here can be regularised and have a good life and living conditions. We will never allow them to win,” he added.
The prime minister informed that the affected area was already being considered under the New Social Housing Programme, adding that it was assessed as one of the tenement yards that “we would seek to upgrade some of the housing and put in proper facilities”.
“That process will be fast-tracked, so if the criminals thought they had won, they would be sadly mistaken. We would also want to engage a process of peace in the area.
“Obviously, this type of incident is going to percolate in the minds of residents here and you could very well have an entrenchment of the gang war that exists, meaning that the people who suffered may want to take things into their own hands, which we can’t have, so we have to engage a process,” the prime minister said.
He further informed that he will be working with the Member of Parliament for St Catherine East Central, Alando Terrelonge, various other government agencies and the police to ensure that “we bring the youth together in the area to show them the folly of this”.
Meanwhile, Holness described the criminal activity as a “scar” on the nation, noting that “it was an act of terrorism designed to spread fear and displace people”.
“When you consider it, that a gang of Jamaican citizens living in this community, they obviously know each other, some of them would have gone to school together, they are friends and they could be possessed by such evil… to come with cannisters of petrol and deliberately walk from house to house and throw the accelerant on the houses and set them on fire with children inside, it is not something that the State should tolerate in any way,” Holness said.
For his part, Terrelonge said there has been an increase in violence within the Gregory Park space, noting that there are certain elements within the community whose “main focus is to terrorise the communities into whatever their social belief is”.
“So far, Councillor Joy Brown and I have started our relief efforts; we have started distributing back-to-school supplies… . Yesterday I was here, as well, delivering food supplies. We have assisted some residents with cash also, just to sort of help them back on the way,” he noted.
He emphasised that “There will be no safe haven for any terrorist in Portmore… we will ensure that the security forces retake the space. No safe quarter will be given to any terrorist, and they will not be allowed to operate within the Gregory Park space.”
In the meantime, Commissioner of Police, Major General Antony Anderson, said the police have been after the persons who committed the criminal activity.
“We understand that among the people were not just men who came over, but also women, who were willing to come over and burn out other women and children. But that is indicative of the sort of threat that we have been facing as a police force.
“We are up to the task and we are going to find these people,” Anderson said.
“We already engaged some of them this morning, they managed to escape but we will be on them. We have identified a number of them, and we will be following up on that,” he added.
Anderson said the security forces will address the matter “in the most forceful fashion to recover the space and ensure that the rule of law obtains everywhere”.
