Sharon Hollister* is thankful her 15-year-old son has completed another month without having a run-in with the law. That is to her knowledge at least. Though still a student, the teenager has been arrested by the police at least seven times in the...
Charmaine Legister is vibrant, straightforward and wraps almost anyone who enters her taxi in her charm. These qualities, she told The Sunday Gleaner, are key ingredients behind her successful enterprise even as many of her male colleagues plying...
At least 10 stores inside the Portmore Mall have fallen casualty to the economic chokehold brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, with several others struggling to stay afloat as St Catherine businesses grapple with revenue losses. And with a 14-day...
For drummer Conroy Gordon, the hardest part of being locked away day after day in the narrow confines of a stranded cruise ship is his inability to tell his two daughters when Daddy will be home. For the past month, he has been battling this...
The coronavirus pandemic has claimed nearly 250,000 lives around the world and has heaped great suffering upon humanity, but if Jamaicans focus on becoming more charitable towards each other, the resilient island will stand strong in the face of...
For years, residents and political representatives in Portmore, St Catherine, have bragged about the so-called Sunshine City’s self-reliance, even calling for the municipality – with its myriad of shopping and resource outlets – to be declared a...
Government is stressing social distancing as one of the main practices to counter the spread of the dreaded COVID-19 in Jamaica. But for residents of several of the Corporate Area’s toughest inner-communities, such a practice falls short of wishful...
Local child-rights advocates have added their voices to international concerns about child abuse and negligence during the indeterminate period of school closure and stay-at-home measures to stem the spread of COVID-19. Last week, the Child...
Winston Peneng* will be 82 years old in September. On Thursday, the elderly man sat patiently in a pharmacy awaiting his hypertension medication as others around him navigated each other cautiously and in hospital surgical masks. “I don’t look it,...
Pharmacies across Jamaica have been hit hard by the COVID-19 scare, and it seems that those in the rural areas are hurting the most, as a shortage of medication for the symptoms, sanitisation products and fear of exposure to the respiratory disease...
Prisoners are already isolated from the rest of the population, but the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) admits that there are still holes through which the dreaded COVID-19 can seep into the institutions, and says it is doing its best to...
Police commanders in Kingston’s commercial hub say they have bolstered patrols as businesses downtown brace for security threats during the COVID-19 scare. Head of the Kingston Central Division Superintendent Maldria Jones-Williams gave the...
Some leaders of Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) churches in the Corporate Area and St Catherine preached over empty pews yesterday, as worshippers for the most part stayed clear from their doors as the threat of a public health crisis from the novel...
The popular Coronation Market on a Saturday is usually a bustling labyrinth of handcart-vendors, tarpaulins and anxious shoppers. But yesterday it was a shadow of itself, as Jamaicans respond to the threat of COVID-19. More vendors than shoppers...
The Jamaica Public Service (JPS) is clamouring for a massive reduction in its corporate income tax (CIT) rate after at least a dozen high-volume consumers have either disconnected fully or partially from the company’s grid since 2018. The utility...
The deadly fire at the Heaven’s FESCO service station in Mandeville, Manchester, last month has refuelled concerns about the training of gas station staff and the long-awaited Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) that Prime Minister Andrew...
Since January, Clarendon has recorded at least 16 murders, nine shootings and some 26 break-ins and robberies – most of them targeted at business operators in and around the May Pen capital. The bloodletting has driven fear into many business...
Less than a month after fishermen in St Catherine confessed to smuggling hundreds of illegal guns into Jamaica from Haiti, security expert Professor Anthony Clayton is urging the Government to invest more in Jamaica’s long-term border protection....
The promise of higher wages and greater respect has gone sour for some district constables-turned-policemen who, since graduation in 2017, have been deployed as part of special security measures in western Jamaica – miles away from their children...
Most of the approximately 5,000 children living in state care across Jamaica are suffering from serious mental disorders, which often worsen after they are removed from their homes or other places deemed unsafe. Representatives from the Child...
Damion Rose laughed hard as his neighbours jeered him last Friday, the scene a stark contrast to the day he arrived home after walking 37 miles from the Norman Manley International Airport to Old Harbour in St Catherine, following his deportation...
Twenty-four-year-old Shamarie Williams does not know if she will be able to foster an intimate relationship with a man again. Not after Mark Riley, the father of her six-year-old son, attacked her with a machete while she slept before setting their...
Members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) are expressing concern that the extraordinary security measures employed by the Government could have a damaging impact on young cops and their service to the nation over the long term. The lawmen’s...
Jamaica’s infantile medical marijuana industry is already coming under threat from distributors who appear to be flouting regulations set out by the Cannabis Licensing Authority (CLA) under the Dangerous Drugs Act. At the same time, lax medical...
Juliet Holness, the member of parliament for St Andrew East Rural, has reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to compensating residents affected by the proposed Southern Coastal Highway Improvement Project, but said squatters in her constituency...
