Prime Minister David Cameron
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Sept 30, CMC – Britain has announced a 300 pound (One British pound =US$1.51 cents) development package for the Caribbean.
Prime Minister David Cameron, the first British prime minister to visit Jamaica in 14 years, said that the funds would infrastructure projects across the Caribbean, including roads, bridges and ports.
He said the regional infrastructure fund, which will be delivered in collaboration with the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and would help support economic growth in the Caribbean.
“I believe this money could help to unleash trade across the region with new roads, new bridges, and new port infrastructure to help speed up freight movements,” he said following bilateral talks with Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller on Tuesday night.
Cameron, who is ending his one-day official visit here on Wednesday, the development could also help benefit British businesses that have the knowledge and expertise in infrastructure improvements.
Cameron said he would be ensuring Jamaica gets some of the nine million US dollars that Britain recently pledged for climate-change financing over the next five years.
He said with 60 per cent of the population of the region living within one and a half kilometres of the coast, much more needs to be done.
During the bilateral talks, Prime Minister Simpson Miller said that she had raised the issue of reparation for slavery saying she told her British guest that while she was “aware of the obvious sensitivities”, Jamaica was “involved in a process under the auspices of the Caribbean Community to engage the UK on the matter”.
On the eve of his arrival here, Chairman of the CARICOM Reparation Commission, Sir Hilary Beckles in an open letter to Cameron said that reparation justice is an issue that can no “be further ignored, remain under the rug, or placed on back burners”.
Sir Hilary said that while Jamaica would open its heart to welcome the British leader, he must also be aware of the issue of reparation for slavery.
Sir Hilary, a historian and Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI), said that the legacies of slavery “continue to derail, undermine and haunt our best efforts at sustainable economic development”.
Cameron is due to address the Jamaica parliament on Wednesday, but one legislator, Mike Henry, has urged colleagues to turn their backs on him if he does not address the reparation issue.
PM sidesteps reparation issue
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Sept 30, CMC – Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron Wednesday acknowledged the “wounds of slavery run very deep” but avoided speaking on the issue of reparation as being called for by Caribbean countries, outlining instead an aid package for the region and a commitment to strengthen relations.
Cameron, the first British prime minister to visit Jamaica for the last 14 years, told a joint sitting of the Parliament that the slave trade was on “from which history has drawn the bitterest of lessons.
“Slavery was and is abhorrent in all its forms. It has no place whatsoever in any civilized society and Britain is proud to have led the way in its abolition.
