Neighbourly advice

Jamaicans are being urged this Christmas season to practise safety and security, especially if they are transporting large amounts of cash.

National Neighbourhood Watch President Dr Asha Mwendo, while underscoring the need for Jamaicans to be safe, is also encouraging Jamaicans to stay safe and to not overindulge in alcohol and food.

“Keep your head about you; keep sober; be aware of your surroundings and environment and just be careful of how we are neighbourly to each other, in that don’t allow what you do to affect your neighbours negatively,” Mwendo said.

“Keep your health in check, don’t do anything in excess, keep your wits and remember we want each of our neighbours to go over into the new year with us,” she shared with The Gleaner in an interview.

Mwendo also sought to remind persons to seek the assistance of the police if they are moving around with large amounts of cash.

In the meantime, she is encouraging Jamaicans to join a neighbourhood watch movement in one of the 19 police divisions islandwide and to play their part in keeping their communities and Jamaica safe.

Revamping groups

Currently, she said the neighbourhood watch is in the process of revamping and has over 400 groups active, which is a massive decrease from the former 700-group strong organisation.

“The groups are revamping. In the new year, we will be doing a number of trainings in proposal writing so that we can get projects into the communities so that we don’t have enough idle hands left for the devil to use to do wrong things,” she said.

“We want to help our citizens to become independent, self-sustainable citizens. If they have to work for others, [we want to ensure that] they are adequately certified and ready and if they work for themselves, that they know how to manage their business so that it can continue to turn over, and take care of themselves and their families because each community is as strong as the weakest person in there,” the president added.

Mwendo explained that the organisation will be collaborating with the Social Development Commission to see what the needs are in the different communities and to tailor the projects accordingly.

Besides, that she said, training will be provided in conflict resolution and sensitisation in domestic violence.

“We will also continue our project in helping persons to become gainfully employed, encouraging them to go through the HEART/NSTA programme as we have been doing,” Mwendo said, while noting that the push now is to get participation from more young people.

Noting that the organisation’s core focus is safety and security in the community and individually, she said if citizens unite, live neighbourly and get involved they would be better able to protect themselves and their communities.

“If anything happens, we have a chain of communication that goes right to the top that we can call upon for our safety and security. When you are a part of the neighbourhood watch movement, you are trained in how to identify negative energies within your space and how to protect your space,” she said.

Mwendo said persons should move away from viewing the movement as an informer group as it “telling what you know to protect yourself and being proactive in protecting yourself, your spaces and to identify the person who is not from your community and what to do.”

“So, if we come together as neighbourhood watch, we will make criminals uncomfortable in our spaces, so we will drive them out of our communities and we will find that after a while there will be nowhere to accommodate them,” she said. “No matter what you do you’re going to have bad people with bad intentions among us but we should make it harder for them to operate if we come together as a network.”

Meanwhile, for the new year, the organisation is appealing to the national security ministry and the Jamaica Constabulary Force to increase its partnership with the movement.

Mwendo said the group wants the ministry to allocate funds to support the community initiatives and inclusion by the police in their interventions in the communities as well as assistance in traversing certain communities.

Overall, she said the organisation wants to be engaged as an important partner in the fight against crime in communities.

tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com