The Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) yesterday called for the Government to cease the awarding of state contracts to businesses with reputed criminal partners and associates.
The PSOJ has also recommended that political parties stop accepting donations from tainted individuals and entities. it views this as the first steps to the dismantling of political garrisons – communities where voter partisanship is enforced by violence or intimidation.
“We must strongly support the contractor general’s recommendation that legislation be enacted to ensure that businesses competing for government contracts subject themselves to significantly more stringent criteria,” said Joseph M. Matalon, president of the umbrella business group, while addressing its 22nd annual general meeting at Knutsford Court Hotel in New Kingston yesterday.
Matalon was outlining a raft of measures which were recommended by the PSOJ Standing Committee on National Security as strategies for tackling crime and violence, especially in light of the days of urban warfare which have crippled the capital’s commercial district.
He pointed out that it was an open secret that there were businesses with umbilical links to the criminal underworld that had morphed into “so-called legitimate enterprises” and were able to project a veneer of legitimacy.
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