Five joint select committees of the Senate will be reconvened during the legislative year to conclude deliberations on various matters.

Among them are the National Commission on Ganja, which has been meeting for more than two years and the committee considering the long-awaited flexible work arrangements.

Barry Chevannes

Last week, new Leader of Government Business in the Senate, Senator AJ Nicholson, passed a resolution to have the committees reconvened.

In 2001, Professor Barry Chevannes who headed the Commission on Ganja, recommended that the Dangerous Drugs Act be amended specifically to allow, without possibility of criminal sanction, the private use of ganja.

The Chevannes Commission also recommended that the use of ganja for religious purposes be recognised as lawful, and suggested, among other things, that ganja use by children should remain legally prohibited.

The range of proposals made by the Chevannes Commission was considered by Parliament in 2003, and although there appears to have been fairly broad support for some types of amendment to the law, the Dangerous Drugs Act has remained unchanged.

Parliament has been slow in making legislative changes for a variety of reasons, but perhaps the most important of these concerns the question of international laws.

Montego Bay cop facing assault charges

A policeman based in Montego Bay is facing charges of assault at common-law for an incident in which he allegedly pulled his service revolver on one of his superiors.

The charges were levelled at the weekend against Constable Ricardo Evans, who is attached to the Mount Salem Police Station, following a ruling from the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Constable Evans is also facing additional charges for breaches of the Anti-Corruption Act. He was charged jointly in that matter on last week with his colleague Constable Peter O’Connor.

The cops are in custody at the St James Police Divisional Headquarters Lock-up and are booked to appear before the Montego Bay Resident Magistrate’s Court soon.

Reports are that the incident occurred almost two weeks ago when the constable was being questioned by senior officers about his alleged role in extorting money from a motorist who had flouted the Road Traffic Act.

It is reported that when he was asked to hand over his firearm, he initially refused and subsequently took the weapon from his waist in a menacing manner before he was overpowered.

Detectives from the Professional Standard Branch (PSB) were called in recently to investigate the corruption matter after Evans and O’Connor allegedly seized a vehicle and arrested its driver in the Mount Salem area. The vehicle did not possess a road licence or insurance coverage.

Jamaica has big potential in services

Joseph Matalon

Joseph ‘Joe’ Matalon is so sure Jamaica’s future is in the service sector that he has staked his family’s fortune on it.

He is responsible for much of that family’s remaining business interests in Jamaica, and particularly in the reformulated ICD group. He is better known to the wider public for his public service as chairman of the Jamaica Tax Reform Committee that produced the so called ‘Matalon Report’.

“Services are the future,” Mr Matalon stated definitively. But he cautions that this is not to say that, “where we have or can create an advantage in the real sector we shouldn’t.”

From an economy which had once been dominated by sectors such as agriculture, mining and manufacturing, by 2004 services contributed 72 per cent of Jamaica’s Gross Domestic Product, according to the Economic and Social Survey. And that dominance has been growing.

Huge potentials remain for the development of services, Mr Matalon says. In his view the tourism product, for example, remains substantially under-developed relative to the resources available in Jamaica.

A London School of Economics educated economist, Mr Matalon joined the family business in 1983 at the age of 23 as a financial analyst after a stint at Alcoa UK, and Alcoa’s head office at Pittsburg in the US rising to chief operations officer of ICD, then a public company listed on the JSE.

Joe Matalon was chiefly responsible for ICD’s delisting, and subsequent pooling with other Matalon family interests including the construction company West Indies Home Contractors (WIHCON) and Prime Life to create the Mechala Group, which was financed through the international issue of US dollar high yield corporate debt.

Facelift coming for 12 inner-city communities

The Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) is set to inject nearly $2 billion into 12 inner-city communities across the island.

The project will be conducted under the Inner City Basic Services Project (ICBSP) to improve the quality of life in these communities.

Government obtained funds from the World Bank to finance the project and an additional $167.4 million is to be procured for it to be carried out.

The 12 communities slated to benefit were selected through a prioritisation exercise that took into consideration the levels of basic services in these areas, strength of community organisations and levels of crime and violence.

Among them are Flankers, St James; Bucknor in Clarendon; the communities of Central Village, Tawes Pen, Africa, Shelter Rock, Lauriston and Knollis in St. Catherine; Jones Town, Federal Gardens, Whitfield Town and Dunkirk in the parishes of Kingston and St. Andrew.

Lead poison alert on fashion jewellery for kids, teenagers

LESS than two weeks after shoe manufacturer Reebok recalled 300,000 charm bracelets from the market, Dollar Tree Inc. is recalling 580,000 items of children’s jewellery.

In a separate action in late March, the United States-based Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said about 580,000 necklace and ring sets, imported by Dollar Tree Distribution Inc., are being recalled because of the danger of lead poisoning.

In Jamaica, the Consumer Affairs Commission (CAC), is alerting consumers to be vigilant when purchasing fashion jewellery for young children and teens.

Dorothy Campbell, public relations manager at the CAC, noted that while the commission had conducted limited checks of retail outlets in Jamaica which revealed that none were currently in stores, it is unclear whether individuals might have purchased the jewellery while visiting abroad.

She added that other companies that have distributed the jewellery, unlike Reebok, do not have a representative in Jamaica and as such, there is no guarantee that the harmful jewellery was not shipped into the country.

The silver-coloured, adjustable rings come in a variety of designs with a toy ‘gem’ in the centre.
The necklaces have a black string with silver-coloured clasps and a silver-coloured charm with a ‘gem’ in the centre.