Hanover JPs Urged To Help Fight Lottery Scamming

National Security Minister, Hon. Peter Bunting, is calling on Justices of the Peace (JPs) in Hanover to join the police in the fight against lottery scamming, which he said, is to be blamed for the increase in murders in the parish since the start of the year.

“As leaders in your communities, you cannot turn a blind eye to it. Keeping silent is giving consent and that is what is called the conspiracy of silence,” he said.

The Minister was addressing a forum hosted by the Hanover Chapter of the Jamaica Lay Magistrates Association on October 1, at the Rusea’s High School in Lucea.

Citing police statistics for September, he informed that Hanover registered more murders than Kingston and St. Andrew combined.

“I tell you this so you can understand the scale of the problem that we are facing in Hanover. It is not a coincidence (that) where you have the concentration of lottery scamming, you have murders,” Mr. Bunting said.

“I have been preaching, warning people that wherever you find lottery scamming, as night follows day, murder is going to follow…..more than half of the murders in St James, Hanover and Westmoreland (the parishes with the highest murder rates), they are related to lottery scamming,” he pointed out.

Hanover has recorded 48 murders year to date, representing a 70 per cent increase, and puts the parish second behind St. James as the parishes with the highest murder rates since the start of the year.

Minister Bunting implored parents in the parish to take a zero tolerance approach to lottery scamming and for those in need of assistance to work with agencies such as the Social Development Commission (SDC), in order to benefit from parenting programmes.