SANDALS AND Air Jamaica chairman Gordon "Butch" Stewart yesterday said the Government's move to set up the new Crime Management Team led by acting Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams was about 10 per cent of the work needed to be done.
Speaking at Sandals Ocho Rios hotel, as he detailed a US$66 million refurbishment programme currently under way in his Jamaican hotel operations, he encouraged the media to continue the current focus on crime.
Mr. Stewart said: "It's (the Crime Management Team) 10 per cent of what the Government has to do, but the crime has gone down, now we need to come up with a lot of other things to (a) bring it down further and (b) take a long-term focus on it, or then it's going to be just another bandaid".
The Sandals boss, a major investor in the Jamaica Observer newspaper, urged the media to keep up with its current media blitz on crime and violence.
"I think the media have played one of their best, best roles ever. It's important that they continue to play that role because it is very obvious that we have a scenario that, whether it's the Government or the police force, they are content at seeing the crime almost continue to deteriorate."
He added: "You know I laugh, laugh, no cry, when I hear sensible people saying that we can't wash our dirty linen in public, that we can't put the crime on the front page, that we can't talk about it on the radio and television."
The boss of the 17-strong Sandals chain admitted that he had been among those that had once made efforts to keep violence out of the news: "We have been hiding the crime for years. People in tourism, and I have been guilty of it, have tried to influence burying crime so that it's not news. Trouble is we are not hiding it because everybody knows. All it has done is stimulate the paranoia and frighten people more."
The island's largest hotelier was speaking as he detailed a huge US$66 million refurbishing programme. He focused primarily on a US$10 million renovation of the former Plantation Inn, a property his chain purchased from FINSAC last December, which is to become an upscale, 74-suite, all-inclusive called Beaches Royal Plantation. And the former Ciboney Ocho Rios, which he hopes to buy and has a management contract to run, is undergoing a US$11 to 12 million refurbishment and will be renamed as Beaches Grande Sport, wellness Mecca. Both are scheduled to open mid-December for the Winter season.
In late August Mr. Stewart led a private sector push to urge Government to increase its focus on the high level of crime. In a typically outspoken speech Mr. Stewart said National Security and Justice Minister K.D. Knight, whom he described as a sweet talker, and Police Commissioner Francis Forbes should be given a week to come up with a workable plan to fight crime or be replaced.
Two weeks later Prime Minister PJ Patterson met with a high-level delegation from the private sector and later announced in a national address that Supt. Adams would head a new Crime Management Team, which he said would be fully supported and funded.
