CHRISTIANA, Manchester — Opposition spokesman on national security Senator Peter Bunting says the 24-member squad which departed Jamaica on Thursday for Haiti is inadequate and merely “tokenism”.

“It is important that we support Haiti with which we have had long ties, and the country and people have suffered largely as a result of being the first black nation to get independence,” he told journalists on Wednesday in Christiana, Manchester.

“I think we have a moral obligation to help them, but our help must be meaningful. My concern is that even when you take into account the other commitments from other countries, primarily Kenya, the contingent is way too small to stabilise the situation in Haiti, so I am fearful that what we are seeing is tokenism,” added Bunting.

The announcement of the deployment was made during Tuesday’s post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House in St Andrew by Prime Minister Andrew Holness who said the personnel, while in Haiti, will “provide, command, planning, and logistics support”.

Holness, who is in charge of the defence portfolio, said the security forces were in a state of readiness to support further deployment towards Jamaica’s overall commitment as the mission in Haiti is scaled up.

“This is a build-up; no country has deployed all at once, it is a start to what we intend to do,” he said.

However, Bunting, a former national security minister, argued that more personnel are needed to have an impact in Haiti.

“The initiative has to be on a much larger scale to really have any chance of success in Haiti. When we look at previous interventions in Haiti it involved tens of thousands of peacekeepers and sending in now less than a thousand, I don’t think it is going to make any significant difference,” he said.

“On the margins they might be able to secure the airport and the port, but in terms of bringing back some public order, even to the capital and the other main towns and villages, is going to be inadequate. So we are not against trying to support Haiti with military and police personnel, but if we want it to be meaningful, we have to look for a much wider coalition to support it, and we have to do it on the basis of meaningful numbers that can tip the balance against the gangs in Haiti,” added Bunting.