The chief executive officers of two Jamaican public hospitals have launched independent probes to ascertain why a mother and her two teenage daughters were turned away from one hospital and denied attention for hours at another after being brutally...
The Independent Commission of Investigations ((INDECOM) has disclosed that the improper use of pepper spray by the police has become a more frequent complaint by citizens, with an estimated five such reports reaching them each month. Assistant...
Twelve-year-old Salvation Army School for the Blind and Visually Impaired student Samantha Jakes* will have nowhere to live this summer if the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA) does not find somewhere for her. Her school’s...
With several studies showing that pregnant women locally are often subjected to domestic violence, members of the Civil Society Collaborative Forum (CSCF) would like for expectant mothers to be screened for gender-based violence when they attend...
Jamaicans who are functionally illiterate could soon have a better chance of securing a driver’s licence, as the Island Traffic Authority (ITA) has been petitioned to modify the examination that is used to measure road-safety knowledge. This...
Director of Public Prosecutions Paula Llewellyn and members of her office have cited the ambivalence of bankers for the State’s failure to secure more convictions amid a wide-ranging fraud racket targeting financial institutions. Commercial banks...
The Jamaican law-enforcement and justice systems appear incapable of clamping down on wide-scale fraud that caused domestic banks and other financial institutions to haemorrhage $750 million last year, a Sunday Gleaner investigation has unveiled....
Jamaica’s commercial banks and businesses have been rocked by a swirling cheque fraud racket in which criminals rent accounts from customers and execute transactions. According to fraud prevention expert for the Jamaica Bankers’ Association, Lloyd...
Jamaica’s chief child welfare organisation estimates that fewer than 40 per cent of parents maintain a relationship with their offspring in state care, and 29-year-old Shellian Somans is among them. The mother of five has won the admiration of...
Jamaica’s youth unemployment rate reached an all-time low of 21.8 per cent in January 2019, but president of the Jamaica Civil Service Association (JCSA), O’Neil Grant, is concerned that a large number of young employees are living on the edge because...
Jamaicans would have their electricity bills slashed by as much as 18 per cent if the company were to eliminate power theft, president and chief executive officer of the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS), Emanuel DaRosa, has revealed. The light...
In a bid to cut costs and drive more business, rogue operators in the competitive funeral home industry have resorted to hiring taxis and other unorthodox vehicles to transport bodies. The bizarre practice has raised concerns about the spectre of...
Five of the 116 people who have tested positive for influenza A (H1N1) in less than four months have died, but with only 35 per cent of the vaccines dispatched locally to fight the deadly flu, thousands might be discarded later this year, as...
Although Jamaica is considered an emerging hotspot for animation, industry experts lament that there are too many structural hurdles hobbling the sector’s profitability. Award-winning animator and head of ListenMi Caribbean Kenia Mattis says that...
Years after graduating from university, some dental hygienists have failed to secure jobs in their field because they are shut out of the public-health sector. The refusal to employ dental hygienists in the public sector is disheartening, said...
A peace garden established at Holy Family Primary School in downtown Kingston last year has been a welcome reprieve for the more than 700 students at the institution who are exposed to acts of violence. The peace garden was financed by...
An alarming shortage of registered dentists in Jamaica has led to a surge in botched services as patients pay a heavy toll chasing after dirt-cheap options. The horror cases have local dentists worried amid a refusal by clients to heed warnings....
The banning from priestly ministry of former Bishop of Mandeville Gordon Bennett for sexual harassment has come as a shocker for the local Catholic Church, but Archbishop Emeritus of Kingston, the Reverend Charles Dufour, has questioned whether ill...
Amid revelations that almost nine in every 10 suicide victims in Jamaica are male, a counsellor has urged men to find sounding boards to talk through their stress and hurt and not bottle up their rage and anxiety. Donovan Thomas, founder of Choose...
Jones Town resident Zavion Webster is the first person in his family to attend college, and the prospects of becoming a middle manager in one of Jamaica’s business processing outsourcing (BPO) companies after graduating with his associate degree...
Citing a lack of prosecution of farm theft across the Breadbasket Parish, the commanding officer of the St Elizabeth police is fearful that the crime is heavily under-reported and that the seeds of vigilantism are finding fertile ground among...
Forty years after the Maternity Leave Act was passed, those who helped to shepherd its passage are concerned that the surge in contract work is depriving scores of employed women of this benefit. Among those who share this concern is Linnette...
Jamaican philanthropist Professor Donald Morgan has taken a swing at expatriates who fail to donate time and funds to nation-building efforts in their homeland. Morgan, a sociology professor whose Jamaica Volunteer Association Incorporated (JVA)...
Committed to steering youths from the path he once trod, violence interrupter Marlon Gordon has been actively persuading at-risk teenagers in west Kingston to live crime free. Gordon said he used to be involved in criminal activities, but the 42-...
Failure to fund research and awareness campaigns on epidemic diseases is a major threat to public health, an internationally renowned scientist has warned. Dr Robert Gallo, a professor of microbiology and immunology, has urged the Jamaican...
