CHAIRMAN of the Crime Monitoring Oversight Committee (CMOC), Lloyd Distant Jr has expressed concern that the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s (JCF) drive to recruit and enlist over 1,000 men and women by March 2021 has fallen way off track and appears to be failing.

Distant was addressing attendees at CMOC’s first update to the nation, since the start of 2021, on the progress made in achieving deliverables agreed on under the National Consensus on Crime. The meeting was held virtually via Zoom.

Following the signing of the crime consensus agreement in August last year, the chairman pointed out that increasing JCF personnel by over 1,000 was a priority area. However, by December only 359 were enlisted.

“The target was that we should have had an increase of over 1,000 new recruits by the end of March 2021. The explanations provided to us is the impact of COVID-19 as well as budgetary constraints that would have hampered the efforts by the JCF to hit the target recruitment number. Our concern goes beyond the fact that we have not hit the recruitment target. The numbers we have received recently indicated that the establishment number is even below where we were at the start of the consensus,” he said, highlighting that while some recruiting is taking place, a significant number of the JCF’s members were leaving the organisation.

In his contribution to the discussion, Opposition spokesperson on national security, Senator Peter Bunting pointed out that in 2015 there were around 11,800 members of the JCF.

“In 2019, notwithstanding the dramatic increase in the budgets of the Ministry of National Security and its agencies, there were around the same 11,800 JCF members. Based on the briefing I had with the commissioner a few weeks ago, it is considerably less now. We are talking about the burden of violent crime and investigating, gathering intelligence, and doing all the things that the JCF is required to do — but they need personnel to do that,” Bunting said.

He added that it was a real disappointment “that with all this additional budget they have not been able to increase the number of personnel”.

The national security minister’s response was that “investment in the security forces is ongoing but there are challenges”, Bunting said.

— BY JASON CROSS