‘Mi nah abandon my customers’
Mt Salem restaurant operator insists he is being targeted by St James Municipal Corporation
Published:Friday | October 21, 2022 | 12:06 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
“Mi nah abandon my customers. Mi deh here for years, and my customers have been here for me.”
That was the defiant declaration on Thursday from Dain Little, the operator of the Jam Rave Restaurant in Mt Salem, St James, which is involved in a legal battle with the St James Municipal Corporation (StJMC) over the restaurant’s current location at the community’s resource centre on lands owned by the municipal authority.
“The resource centre is in full operation, and I am not in the resource centre, I am just at the side of the place. Persons are entering the resource centre, it is not occupied by me, and I do not use their facility; I just use the side where Mr Thomas [Councillor Kerry Thomas, the StJMC’s councillor for the Mt Salem division] and the Community Development Committee said I could set up,” Little explained. “There is no permanent structure, and it is temporary until my space, which I will be moving into, is finished and that will be between December and early January 2023.”
The Jam Rave Restaurant, which was previously located in a building on the sidewalk near the Cornwall Regional Hospital’s main entrance and which has since been closed, was previously at the centre of a protest staged by residents in May of this year, in response to the StJMC’s action to close the restaurant.
The StJMC had served Little with an injunction, stating that the combined eatery and grocery shop, which he has operating since 1996 and which employed over 25 workers at its former site, was impeding traffic, breeding rodents, and obstructing pedestrians from accessing the pedestrian crossing near the hospital’s entrance.
But Little dismissed the claims, instead pointing to his political affiliation as the reason for the antagonistic relationship with the municipal authorities.
“It nuh have nothing fi do with no rat and no roach. No food cooking nah gwaan at the site, we only serve it there, and we never had any problem from the police about idlers,” Little insisted. “The reason why they [StJMC] are fighting against me is because I am not supporting them, because I am no longer their activist, and they need to speak the truth.”
During the StJMC’s recent monthly meeting, chief executive officer Gerald Lee told councillors that Little had got permission from Mt Salem’s Community Development Committee and Benevolence Society to operate his business at the resource centre’s premises temporarily.
At that time, Thomas – who is part of the StJMC’s minority caucus – said the corporation should seek to assist small business operators to grow and improve their services.
“Yes, I was aware that they got the facility, but they are not taking over the resource centre, as it is an addition in the yard of the property, and they have found another location that they are now setting up. Sometimes we must be in a position to assist and to help, and I do not believe that in this time we should find ways to destroy businesses that persons have built over time,” Thomas told the meeting.
But in a sharp rebuttal Government Senator Charles Sinclair, the StJMC’s councillor for the Montego Bay North East division, asserted that the StJMC must stand for law and order.
“The municipal corporation where we sit is a law enforcement agency, and we are responsible in the parish for maintaining law and order. When we do things, we must have things done in order,” the tough-talking Sinclair said.
In the meantime, Little is questioning how much longer will the battle continue.
“When they approached me in 2017, they said I was on the municipal corporation’s property. But it is not the corporation that is in charge of that property, it is the Ministry of Health and the St James Health Authority. We went to court in 2018, and they had to withdraw their case because they did not have a strong case against me, and the judge at that time told them that their approach was wrong,” said Little.
“They came back again in 2020, when I campaigned against them, and they have come back now in 2022 with revenge. When is it going to stop? Because I am not going to stop, I am always going to be an activist,” the businessman insisted.