SOMETHING IS rotten in the City of Montego Bay to paraphrase a famous quotation from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
How else can one explain the barbarity of the savages who set three street persons ablaze in Sam Sharpe Square? It was this same venue which earned the Second City notoriety in the 1999 Street People Scandal.
Although some 30 indigents were carted off at dead of night and dumped in St. Elizabeth, no one has paid a penalty for that municipal disgrace. And an elaborate Commission Enquiry failed to find the culprits in that episode.
Even with the futility of that exercise, the scale of the operation, involving servants of the State, pointed to some level of organised conspiracy. Not so the most recent incidents.
Some person or persons devoid of any civilised instincts seemed to have acted from sheer cruelty. We are not surprised that Tourism Minister Portia Simpson Miller has questioned "the sense of human spirit, justice and decency" among some residents of Montego Bay; and indeed the lack of compassion evident throughout the society.
The Minister's comments comprise what has been only minimal expression of official outrage as far as we are aware; though there have been reports of active police investigation.
Other reaction amounts to reminders about the inadequacy of any comprehensive policy which tackles the street people problem effectively. We get the impression that a good many of such persons are not simply homeless, but also mentally impaired. Which makes the problem not merely one of housing but also of health, a factor which is also drug-related.
This latter aspect has been cited by a spokesperson for the Committee for the Upliftment of the Mentally Ill (CUMI), an NGO based in Montego Bay, which feels that most of the street people have drug-related problems. All the more reason for community compassion rather than the rot which seems to have taken root in Montego Bay.
