Fight for your rights – Crawford
Published:Friday | June 10, 2022 | 12:08 AMTamara Bailey/Gleaner Writer
NEW GREEN, Manchester:
People’s National Party (PNP) Senator Damion Crawford has called out the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP)-led Government for what he says is their role in enabling the system to work against the Jamaican people instead of for them.
“The big difference between the PNP and the JLP, and the reason why people should support the PNP, is that the JLP are there to maintain and sustain the system and the PNP has been there to fight the system – equal pay for women, maternity leave with pay, minimum wage, land for the landless, NHT (benefits), PATH programme – that was the PNP fighting the system.”
Crawford, who was speaking at the PNP’s New Green Divisional Conference in Manchester on Saturday, also accused the Government of proposing ideas to solve the nation’s problems before properly assessing the scope of the problem.
“When I realise a man cannot afford chicken, the cheapest available protein, that’s the system. When PATH programme gives you $50 a day, that cannot give you nutrients.
“We have high blood pressure, by time we a 40 we have diabetes. By the time you are 40, your child is 10 and then you start transfer education money to medicine money ... that’s the system,” he added.
Crawford indicated that people have now grown accustomed to taking what is offered instead of fighting for their rights.
“Nobody is coming to teach you about that (system) because they want to maintain the system where you run behind politician for five grand, and every election you take five grand for five years.
“You don’t know what you deserve. You don’t know you deserve to have your garbage collected, roads fixed, schools to be good, doctors at the clinic ... and because you don’t know what you deserve, the last time we had an election, the manifesto was secondary to the shoes and the dub plates,” Crawford stated.
Citing a lack of equal opportunities for all, he said the maintained system continues to compound the issue of crime and violence in the country.
“I look and see that every violent community is poor. I have never seen Norbrook say them a go fight Jack’s Hill. I’m seeing where the young men decide that what they want is a gun instead of a wholesale.”
“If 10 man have 10 gun, that could start a wholesale. Why every black man in a gang and every Chinese man run a shop? The system tell you that those who are rich own something, but it is not so. It is those who own something get rich,” he exclaimed.
Crawford called for unity within the PNP, citing organised action as the easiest way to change the system.