分类： society

Residents of Jamaica’s Westmoreland parish, who have endured growing mountains of uncollected garbage for months, are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel, as regional waste management officials have redirected emergency resources from neighboring St James to clear the crippling collection backlog.

Leona Bennett, senior public cleansing inspector for Western Parks and Markets (WPM) Waste Management Limited — the regional subsidiary of Jamaica’s National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) — outlined the emergency intervention during the monthly general meeting of the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation this week. Four additional waste collection trucks have been deployed to the parish to tackle accumulated waste, with the fleet set to remain on site until the entire backlog is eliminated, she confirmed.

“The trucks from St James began arriving last week, and they have continued working through this week, with crews on site as recently as yesterday and Friday. Regional operations manager Dramaine Jones has guaranteed that the vehicles will stay with us through next week, until every last trace of the backlog is cleared,” Bennett told assembled council members.

The temporary reassignment of vehicles is just one pillar of a broader, multi-pronged strategy to reverse Westmoreland’s waste crisis. To accelerate collection efforts, WPM has also extended operating hours by ramping up night shift services, with collection trucks now servicing main roads and residential communities after standard business hours.

“Local residents can confirm for themselves that our trucks have been active in their neighborhoods overnight. We are pulling out all the stops to erase this backlog as quickly as we possibly can,” Bennett said.

Alongside emergency collection measures, the agency is running ongoing bulky waste removal campaigns and community public education programs designed to curb persistent illegal dumping, one of the root causes of the parish’s waste management struggles. Bennett emphasized that long-term cleanliness depends on active participation from local residents, urging the public to take greater responsibility for waste disposal.

“We are asking everyone to take pride in our parish and properly contain all waste. If you are transporting waste, please dispose of it at designated communal bins instead of leaving it in unauthorized areas,” she said.

Bennett acknowledged that illegal dumping remains a persistent blight on Westmoreland’s communities, noting that the problem adds unnecessary strain to already stretched resources. “It slows our progress clearing the backlog when we constantly find new piles of illegally dumped waste on main roads and public spaces, left by people from across the parish,” she explained.

In a long-awaited update on a critical permanent infrastructure project, Bennett also confirmed that the long-delayed Westmoreland waste transfer station has finally entered the construction preparation phase. First announced back in 2014, the project has faced years of unanticipated delays that pushed its original 2024 operational target back, but site work is now officially underway. The project site has been fully cleared, and crews are currently laying base material for the facility’s foundation.

“Once the foundation work is complete, construction of the facility’s core infrastructure will proceed without further delays, and we will provide regular updates to the municipal corporation on progress,” Bennett said.

Local councillors welcomed the news of the transfer station’s progress, highlighting the transformative impact the facility will have on the parish’s long-term waste management capacity. Ian Myles, Jamaica Labour Party councillor for the Little London Division, called the start of construction a major milestone for Westmoreland.

“We all understand how vital this facility is for our parish, so to hear that construction is finally underway is incredibly exciting. Located just five minutes from Georges Plain, the transfer station will streamline waste hauling from central, eastern and western Westmoreland before waste is sent on to Montego Bay, and it will give us far more capacity to keep the entire parish clean,” Myles said.

Jamaica’s St Thomas parish is boosting uniformed police presence along its new stretch of the Southern Coastal Highway to crack down on dangerous speeding, particularly among reckless motorcycle delivery riders, according to the division’s top law enforcement official.

Deputy Superintendent Rohan Ritchie, commanding officer of the St Thomas Police Division, announced the new enforcement measure during a regular monthly sitting of the St Thomas Municipal Corporation on Thursday. The move follows urgent public safety warnings raised by Port Morant Division Councillor Dinsdale Smith, a member of the People’s National Party, who highlighted growing community alarm over reckless operation of delivery bikes linked to local fast-food outlets.

At the center of Smith’s concerns are riders working out of the newly opened Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) location in Morant Bay’s Urban Centre. He told assembled municipal officials that local residents have grown increasingly uneasy watching riders weave erratically through congested traffic to meet delivery deadlines, warning that unchecked reckless behavior will almost certainly lead to catastrophic, fatal collisions.

“We have one of the world’s biggest food franchises newly opened here, and their delivery service is certainly efficient, but the way some of these riders use our public roads is deeply troubling,” Smith told the meeting. “I cannot understand what pushes them to ride the way they do, but I can already see catastrophic accidents on the horizon if nothing changes.”

Smith called on local police to intervene, suggesting targeted outreach and educational sessions could help riders understand how their reckless maneuvers put other road users at risk and create public nuisance. “We need to make clear that this kind of behavior cannot continue, and that fatalities are not a price we are willing to pay for fast delivery,” he added.

Ritchie acknowledged the validity of the concerns, but outlined significant operational challenges law enforcement faces when intercepting reckless motorcycle riders. Police are banned from engaging in high-speed chases, he explained, because fleeing riders often lose control and turn their bikes into dangerous weapons that can injure bystanders or other motorists. Compounding enforcement issues, Ritchie added that many of the motorcycles ridden by delivery workers carry registration plates that are not legally tied to the actual rider, making post-incident accountability difficult. Even when officers are able to catch offenders, he noted, vehicles are seized and violators are prosecuted, but the structural challenges persist.

Going forward, Ritchie said the division will pair increased visible patrols along the highway with expanded public education campaigns targeted at young motorcyclists, who make up the vast majority of delivery riders and speed-related accidents in the parish. “Data shows that most speed-related crash victims and offenders are young people, who push their bikes to the limit because they think they are invincible,” Ritchie told the chamber, drawing light laughter when he noted “At my age, I never go over 30 miles an hour.” He added that the core message of outreach will be simple: the whole point of driving is to arrive at your destination alive.

The newly completed stretch of highway that cuts through St Thomas has been a major infrastructure win for the parish, cutting travel time from Harbour View to Morant Bay from an average two hours to just 30 to 40 minutes by Ritchie’s account, smoothing out the notoriously congested route that once plagued commercial and personal travel. But better road conditions have come with an unexpected downside: they have emboldened motorists to hit dangerously high speeds, Ritchie said. Since the start of 2024, the parish has recorded four fatal collisions that left five people dead, a statistic Ritchie says demands urgent action to slow traffic down.

“We cannot overemphasize this enough: we need all motorists to slow down and take extra care on this new thoroughfare,” Ritchie said. “We are committed to doing everything in our power to curb reckless driving and prevent more preventable deaths.”

In ST MARY, Jamaica, a 31-year-old man who had been a fugitive for more than two weeks in the fatal investigation of his American girlfriend has turned himself in to local law enforcement, following coordinated intervention from his family that secured a peaceful handover on Friday, May 15. Dane Watson had evaded police custody since April 29, the day 42-year-old Melissa Sammoth, a resident of New York, was admitted to Cornwall Regional Hospital with multiple severe injuries. Medical staff later confirmed Sammoth’s death after efforts to treat her were unsuccessful. According to official police accounts, Watson personally transported Sammoth to the hospital’s emergency care facility before fleeing the scene immediately after dropping her off. Investigators had spent weeks tracing the suspect’s movements, working from the theory that he had left his original parish and was hiding out in the tight-knit Gayle community within St Mary. As pressure from the manhunt mounted, Watson grew concerned for his own personal safety and reached out to his family members to arrange a peaceful surrender. His relatives immediately contacted the Gayle division of the Jamaica Constabulary Force to open negotiations, and after careful coordination between family representatives and investigating officers, Watson was formally transferred into police custody without incident. The suspect remains behind bars as detectives continue working to piece together a full timeline of the events leading up to Sammoth’s death, including potential motives and the exact sequence of actions that left her with fatal injuries. Because of Sammoth’s status as an American citizen from New York, the high-profile case has attracted scrutiny from both domestic Jamaican audiences and international observers, with law enforcement prioritizing a thorough, transparent investigation to resolve all unanswered questions surrounding the incident.

In Kingston, Jamaica, a deliberate, sweeping educational renewal is taking root at St Andrew Preparatory School, driven by Principal Dr. Carol Blanchard’s vision of prioritizing whole-student development over narrow academic focus. Since Dr. Blanchard took the helm in July 2023, the institution has reimagined every layer of the student experience, from classroom curricula to extracurricular programming, and that progress recently earned a major vote of confidence: a JMD $500,000 donation to the school’s track and field program from local corporate partner Express Canteen Services, timed to support preparations for the upcoming annual Prep Champs athletic championships.

What sets St Andrew Prep’s current trajectory apart is its intentional focus on balancing strong academic outcomes with character building, social skill development, and athletic excellence. Dr. Blanchard, a veteran educator with a track record of turning around programs at other Jamaican preparatory schools, has centered her leadership on a simple but transformative idea: in an age where students can access any fact online for free, schools must shift their focus from delivering content to teaching information literacy, emotional intelligence, and practical life skills that prepare young people for long-term success.

This approach has already yielded measurable gains across every area of school life. In academic competition, the school advanced from only reaching the first round of the prestigious Junior Schools’ Challenge Quiz to breaking into the quarter-finals this year. A new robotics program, paired with the school’s longstanding chess initiative, has been a standout success: 42 out of 45 students entered in robotics competitions earned top marks this year, and Dr. Blanchard noted a clear, positive correlation between participation in STEM-focused extracurriculars and improved mathematics performance across the curriculum. Students have also excelled in the Kangaroo Mathematics challenge and the BIBRAS computational thinking competition, with several advancing to international rounds of the events.

Extracurricular success extends far beyond STEM. St Andrew Prep remains a dominant contender in preparatory school chess, gunning for its third consecutive championship title, while new student leadership and communication programs like Children’s Parliament and the impromptu speaking initiative Literary Voices have helped hundreds of students build public confidence and communication skills. On the athletic track, the program has been building momentum after a fifth-place finish at last year’s Prep Champs, with coach Patrick Johnson noting this year’s roster is deeper and stronger than ever.

The JMD $500,000 donation from Express Canteen could not have come at a better time, Dr. Blanchard explained, particularly as an independent school that receives no government funding and relies entirely on student tuition to cover operating costs. Shifting economic conditions across Jamaica have made corporate partnerships critical to expanding programs, retaining top teaching talent, and supporting high-cost extracurriculars like athletics that draw strong interest from families.

For Express Canteen’s leadership, the investment aligns perfectly with the company’s core philosophy of “Feed Your Dreams.” Co-owner Ryan Foster emphasized that the company’s support is about more than just financial assistance—it is a commitment to backing a model of education that prioritizes holistic growth. “What I admire about Dr. Blanchard’s work is how you are building a holistic environment for students to self-actualise, not just on the field of play, but also in the classroom,” Foster said. His wife and business partner Simone Foster added that the partnership has always centered on empowering young Jamaicans, noting that the donation is part of a long-term commitment to the school’s mission.

Track coach Patrick Johnson says the funding will allow the program to expand access to quality coaching for all interested students, rather than only focusing on elite contenders, as the team ramps up preparations for this year’s championships. While he remains cautiously optimistic, noting that competition results can be unpredictable, he confirmed this year’s team has already outperformed expectations in pre-championship development meets.

The transformation has already translated to growing community demand for places at the school: after turning away more than 30 Grade One applicants two years ago, the school was oversubscribed by more than 50 students for the 2024 intake. For Dr. Blanchard, that interest is validation of the holistic model, but the work is far from over. With the Prep Champs just around the corner, she says the school is ready to exceed expectations: “Look out for us. We might just be the champions this year.”

KINGSTON, Jamaica — At a small ceremonial gathering held at Kingston’s AC Hotel, multi-hyphenate Jamaican leader Dr Patricia Smith — a successful home care entrepreneur, hotel operator, and published author — officially gifted a signed copy of her latest work *I Persist* to Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett. The event unfolded on the margins of a cross-sector convening that brought together top stakeholders from Jamaica’s tourism, education, and business industries, all gathered to exchange ideas around building greater resilience and driving innovation across the country’s key service sectors.

In her remarks during the presentation, Dr Smith outlined the core mission that drove her to write *I Persist*. The book was crafted as a source of encouragement for Jamaicans across all walks of life, she explained, with a special focus on uplifting women who grew up in state-run care institutions, as well as any person who has navigated the devastating challenges of homelessness and hopelessness. Its core message is simple: to urge readers to stay unshakable in the face of hardship, and to build every part of their lives around clear, intentional purpose.

Dr Smith went on to frame Minister Bartlett himself as a living example of the persistence her book celebrates. From leading Jamaica’s tourism sector through repeated global crises to advocating tirelessly for the country as a top-tier travel destination on the international stage, Bartlett’s decades-long career embodies the very spirit at the heart of *I Persist*, she said. Dr Smith shared that her hope is the book will strike a chord with every Jamaican who is dedicated to building a more robust, prosperous nation for all.

Minister Bartlett accepted the gift with gratitude, emphasizing that the values of resilience and endurance that *I Persist* explores lie at the center of Jamaica’s strategy for tourism recovery and long-term growth. He reflected on the repeated shocks the sector has absorbed over recent years: devastating hurricanes, the global COVID-19 pandemic, and ongoing geopolitical instability that has reshaped international travel. Through every challenge, Bartlett noted, Jamaica’s tourism industry has persisted, adapted, and reimagined itself — and that ability to bounce back is the very reason the country remains one of the most sought-after Caribbean destinations for travelers worldwide. He thanked Dr Smith for the thoughtful gesture and for her contribution to the growing national conversation about what it means to lead with endurance.

Beyond its motivational message, *I Persist* digs into interconnected themes of personal resilience, overcoming systemic barriers that hold marginalized communities back, and the transformative power of leadership rooted in clear purpose.

KINGSTON, Jamaica — On Thursday this year, daily work came to a standstill across every regional office of global real estate network Keller Williams, as the organization marked its signature annual event: RED Day. This long-running tradition, built on the core values of service, gratitude and collective community uplift, brings thousands of agents across the world together each year to step away from their regular professional duties and invest direct effort into the local neighborhoods that sustain their work. Short for “Renew, Energize, Donate”, RED Day has grown far beyond a single corporate CSR project to become a coordinated global movement focused on tangible, on-the-ground impact. While the global initiative paused operations on Thursday, volunteer teams across Jamaica carried out their community projects the following day, focusing their efforts on two of the nation’s most vital mission-driven institutions in locations across Kingston, Ocho Rios and Montego Bay.

Local Keller Williams agents split into teams to volunteer at two key organizations: The Women’s Centre of Jamaica Foundation, which supports young mothers across the country through tailored education programs and wraparound support services, and Westhaven Children’s Home in Hanover, a residential care facility that provides ongoing care and support for children living with disabilities. On-site at Westhaven, volunteers completed much-needed roof repair work that had been a pressing need for the home for months.

Nicole Touzalin, Qualifying Director for Keller Williams Jamaica, emphasized the deep connection between the firm’s commercial success and the community it serves. “As real estate professionals and members of a global network, we have to recognize that our success is inextricably tied to the strength of the local communities we work in. Every successful transaction, every long-term client relationship, every professional opportunity we get comes from the trust and support local residents give us year after year. RED Day gives us a dedicated moment to step back from our work and give that energy back in a way that is meaningful and tangible for people who need it,” Touzalin explained.

Beyond the structural repairs at Westhaven, volunteers across both sites participated in a wide range of hands-on activities. Teams refurbished aging facility spaces, built new community gardens and planted native trees, delivered critically needed essential supplies to both institutions, and set aside time to connect directly with residents and care staff. What emerged as the most impactful part of the day, however, was not the physical improvements, but the genuine sense of connection and solidarity built between volunteers and the communities they served.

Organizers stressed that RED Day is never just about donating material goods or completing construction projects. At its core, the initiative is about showing up, offering compassion, and reinforcing the message that no member of a community has to face challenges alone. Brittany Ffrench, Director of KW Cares Jamaica, noted that the event carries extra weight in Jamaica, where communal connection and shared culture are central to daily life. “Here, corporate responsibility isn’t an optional add-on to doing business—it’s an essential part of being a good community member. When we invest our time and effort into institutions like the Women’s Centre of Jamaica Foundation and Westhaven Children’s Home, we’re not just fixing a roof or sorting supplies—we’re investing in the future of our nation. We’re standing with young mothers working to build a second chance for themselves and their families, and we’re uplifiting children who deserve every opportunity to live with dignity, care and hope,” Ffrench added.

In Montego Bay, St James, a local motorist’s misguided attempt to bribe a police officer to avoid traffic penalties has resulted in a far heftier financial penalty than he ever expected. 56-year-old Eric Buchanan faced sentencing last Wednesday before Judge Natiesha-Fairclough Hylton at the St James Parish Court, where he was ordered to pay a combined $75,000 in fines across four separate offenses, after his $10,000 bribe offer backfired spectacularly.

Details of the incident, which have now been laid out in open court, show that uniformed police officers on routine mobile patrol first spotted Buchanan violating road rules by ignoring a posted one-way traffic sign. Pulling the driver over, officers requested his standard operating documentation: a valid driver’s license, proof of insurance coverage, and a current vehicle fitness certificate. Upon inspection, officers quickly confirmed that Buchanan lacked two required documents: a valid insurance certificate and an up-to-date fitness certificate for his vehicle.

After being instructed to gather and submit all required paperwork, Buchanan eventually handed a folder of documents to the attending officer. The officer immediately noticed two $5,000 banknotes folded inside the cover of the insurance documents, court records confirm. Prosecutors allege that Buchanan explicitly encouraged the officer to accept the cash, saying in local patois: “Officer, yuh done see wha a gwaan? Tek this and gwaan officer, yuh done see wha a gwaan” — a clear request for the officer to look past his violations in exchange for the hidden $10,000 bribe.

Buchanan was taken into custody on bribery charges immediately after the attempted payoff. During his court appearance, the motorist pushed back against the bribery allegation, claiming the entire situation was a misunderstanding. He argued that the hidden cash was not a bribe, but a “gesture” to reward the officer for what he claimed was assistance helping him exit a nearby car park. He added that heavy rain had created confusion around the traffic stop, but his explanation was inconsistent and difficult for the court to corroborate.

Judge Fairclough-Hylton rejected Buchanan’s version of events entirely, and handed down stacked penalties to send a clear message about corruption attempts targeting law enforcement. For the bribery charge alone, Buchanan was ordered to pay a $30,000 fine or serve 30 days in prison in default of payment. Additional penalties were imposed for his other traffic violations: $20,000 fine (or 10 days’ jail) for driving without valid insurance, $17,000 fine (or 10 days) for operating an unfit vehicle, and $8,000 fine (or 10 days) for disobeying the one-way traffic sign — bringing the total mandatory fine to $75,000, seven and a half times the value of the original bribe Buchanan tried to offer.