Black Immigrant Daily News

Five teenagers have been charged with murder in connection with the fiery death of 48-year-old Lionel Johnson of Deanery Road, Kingston 3, a “savage act” that prompted the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development to offer a reward of $500,000 for information leading to an arrest in the matter.

Johnson, a homeless man, was killed on upper King Street in Kingston on August 29.

Those slapped with murder charges are 15, 16 and 17 years old. The police listed them as follows:

A 17-year-old boy from King Street, KingstonA 17-year-old student of Mark Lane, KingstonA 16-year-old boy from Love Lane, KingstonA 15-year-old student of Church Street, KingstonA 15-year-old student of Anderson Road, Kingston

Detectives assigned to the Central police reported that about 1:30am, a team of officers was on patrol in the area when they saw Johnson running.

Enquiries were made and it was observed that he had several severe burns to his body. He was transported to the hospital where he died while being treated.

An investigation was launched and the youngsters were charged after question-and-answer sessions were conducted with their attorneys on October 4 and October 5.

At the time of Johnson’s death, an outraged Minister of Local Government and Rural Development Desmond McKenzie said: “This is an absolutely savage act. While we still don’t know the motive for this heinous crime, the suffering that Mr Johnson would have endured, as well as the taking of his life, reflects for me the lowest level of depravity.”

He also shared that Johnson was well known to the Kingston and St Andrew Poor Relief Department, which regularly supported him by providing food, and at times he stayed at the Night Shelter at Church Street.

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Approximately 15,000 new housing solutions are programmed for construction, under the Greater Bernard Lodge Development Project in St. Catherine.

Providing an update in the House of Representatives, Prime Minister, Andrew Holness, said three housing developers have already commenced construction of their respective housing schemes on the divested lands.

“It is expected that between them some 6,000 houses will be available in the near term, with the other developers expected to follow shortly. It is anticipated that the Greater Bernard Lodge will see the construction of some 15,000 new housing solutions over the next five to eight years. The community will be complemented by a modern urban centre,” he said.

Prime Minister Holness explained that a unique feature of the divestment of the lands is that successful purchasers must pay an impact fee that will cover infrastructural development.

“This is a sort of development fee for building out the foundational carrying infrastructure, that is water, sewerage, provisions for fibre optics, drainage, roads and green spaces. These fees are paid into a special-purpose vehicle that manages and executes the construction of the infrastructure to ensure quality and uniformity throughout the entire development,” Holness said.

“Too often we have seen Government divest lands for housing development and the quality of the infrastructure is abysmal, if not nonexistent. Ultimately, the Government bears the cost to build out sewer treatment plants, lay water pipes and pave roads that developers ought to have done. In this development, we have ensured that the owners who will purchase their houses in the future do not suffer the discomfort of acquiring a property only to find that they have no sewer, their roads were not paved, though they were promised,” he added.

He said one uniformed high-quality standard will be undertaken for the infrastructural works.

“We are not allowing the developers themselves to do the infrastructure, because what you will find is one developer will say I can do it cheaper or I will do it to this standard; no, we want one uniformed type quality standard,” the prime minister emphasised.

He informed that though delayed by COVID-19 restrictions and bouts of inclement weather, construction is well advanced with the laying of water pipes and sewerage infrastructure.

“Potable water is already available to much of the development area. A five-kilometre highway will traverse the development from east to west and these works are currently the subject of an open tender. A flood mitigation plan has been designed and will be implemented on a phased basis,” he noted.

Mr. Holness said more than 100 acres of land have been dedicated in the master plan as a retention pond.

“It is Government’s policy that the Greater Bernard Lodge Development should be inclusive; we are not just putting up lovely structures, we want to build communities of order, security, dignity, respect and fairness,” he added.

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As government representatives begin to finalize the agenda for the COP27 climate change conference in Egypt next month, the UN chief told journalists in New York that the work ahead is “as immense as the climate impacts we are seeing around the world”.

Speaking to reporters in New York, as the pre-COP meeting got underway in Kinshasa, Secretary-General António Guterres laid out the worsening impacts worldwide.

“A third of Pakistan flooded. Europe’s hottest summer in 500 years. The Philippines hammered. The whole of Cuba in black-out. And here, in the United States, Hurricane Ian has delivered a brutal reminder that no country and no economy is immune from the climate crisis,” he highlighted.

And while “climate chaos gallops ahead, climate action has stalled,” he added.

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Faulty maths

The top UN Official underscored the importance of COP27 while warning that the collective commitments of G20 leading industrialized nations governments are coming “far too little, and far too late”.

“The actions of the wealthiest developed and emerging economies simply don’t add up.,” he said, pointing out that current pledges and policies are “shutting the door” on limiting global temperature to 2°C, let alone meet the 1.5°C goal.

Mr. Guterres warned, “we are in a life-or-death struggle for our own safety today and our survival tomorrow,” saying there is no time for pointing fingers or “twiddling thumbs” but instead requires “a quantum level compromise between developed and emerging economies”.

“The world can’t wait,” he spelled out. “Emissions are at an all-time high and rising”.

And he said that while pursuing their own “drop-in-the-bucket initiatives” international financial institutions must overhaul their business approaches to combat climate change.

SOURCE: UN News/SLT

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Hier (jeudi 6 octobre), plusieurs collèges et lycées n’ont pu accueillir d’élèves, en raison du mouvement de grève observé par les agents techniques territoriaux des établissements d’enseignement (ATTEE), chargés de l’entretien et de la restauration. Ils réclament des effectifs supplémentaires.

France-Antilles Martinique

803 mots – 07.10.2022

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