NEW YORK, NY – Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Portia Simpson Miller, has proposed that the Caribbean region was seeking assistance from the United States (US) to implement a monitoring program for deportees, particularly those persons, who had migrated to the US as children.
Mrs. Simpson Miller, who was speaking at an editorial board meeting at Carib News in New York last Friday (August 11), which was hosted by Karl Rodney, the head of the news station, further suggested the establishment of a skills training programs for deportees in Jamaica and other regional islands.
These initiatives, she said, would provide support for deportees wherein “[they] would be able to assist themselves so they do not find themselves on the streets.or those who were not hardened criminals that are deported would be able to get integrated in a proper way in the society back home.”
She told the editorial meeting in New York that she thought “it is something that the [Caribbean] region as a whole should approach and make a recommendation and then begin to have discussions with the powers that be here [in the US]”.
Caribbean people living in the United States, she continued, “certainly can lobby their congressmen, their senators, and government here in terms of how they treat the region and the people they are deporting back to the region.”
On another matter, the Prime Minister informed that she has given instructions to Cabinet for a review of legislation to address breaches of the procurement laws.
She noted that the government was examining existing legislation “in terms of any breaches of procurement or the laws and penalties.”
She advised the editorial meeting, which was also attended by Industry, Technology, Energy and Commerce Minister, Phillip Paulwell and Development and Information Minister, Senator Colin Campbell, that the Contractor General’s legislation was being examined “to see how we can look at it to review to ensure that there is no way that anyone can breach or break [the law] and that our public officials can be held accountable for actions if they break the law.”
