Gov’t Moving Ahead With National Registration System

Minister of National Security, Senator Dwight Nelson, has said that Government is moving ahead with the establishment of a national registration system, as an effective tool in the fight against crime.
Under the system, which was announced by Prime Minister, Bruce Golding in 2008, a unique number will be assigned to every Jamaicans from birth, around which the national identification data will be built.
“We have already allocated the resources to commence the process,” Senator Nelson informed, as he addressed the Ministry’s first national consultation on crime held yesterday (May 28) at the Montego Bay Civic Centre.
He explained that the objective of the programme “is to ensure that every single Jamaican will have a national identification number”.
According to the Security Minister, “one of the problems we have with crime fighting is that when there is need to apprehend suspects, they cannot be found.”
“They have aliases, they have no birth certificates, they have no baptismal records, they have no fixed address and when there is need to apprehend them, the police cannot find them,” he pointed out.
He said that once the system comes into place, “nobody is going to exist in this country without that identification number. It is a very intrinsic ingredient in the fight against crime and we are starting the process of getting it established. It is not going to happen tomorrow, but it will happen, I assure you.”
Expressing sorrow at the tragic deaths of five girls at the Armadale Juvenile Centre in St. Ann recently, Minister Nelson pointed to the need for programmes and activities, which can channel the energies of young people into positive undertakings.
“I kept asking myself the question, what if we were able to channel the energies of these girls at school, into some activity which would have saved their lives … we are not placing emphasis on such groupings as scouts any more. We are going to have to revive these uniformed groups in the schools, groups such as the boys’ scouts, the cadets, the girl guides and the brownies. We’re going to have to give our young people an alternative to challenge their exuberance into character building rather than crime and criminality. We are going to pursue that vigorously,” the Minister told the gathering.
The three Members of Parliament for the parish, Dr. Horace Chang, Clive Mullings and Edmund Bartlett, along with Commissioner of Police, Hardley Lewin and high ranking officers from the police force, also participated in the event.
Under the theme: ‘Together we can stop it’, the consultations are being undertaken by the Ministry to get the public’s input to arrive at a general consensus on crime management initiatives in Jamaica.