Chief Minister and Minister of Home Affairs in Anguilla, Osbourne Fleming, led his colleagues in the Anguilla House of Assembly on Monday in expressing disgust with crime on the island and in calling on the population to be vigilant of the situation and to help do something about it. He was referring to the latest criminal incident in which an Anguillian youth was stabbed to death in South Hill by another young man who is originally from Jamaica.

Chief Minister addressing House of Assembly

Mr. Fleming was speaking during the presentation of a supplementary budget, of just over EC$22 million, by Minister of Finance, Victor Banks, to meet the extra expenditure which the Government had incurred during the latter part of the year.

The Chief Minister said that the supplementary budget included EC$419,000 for professional and consultancy services to strengthen the Royal Anguilla Police Force and was in addition to the EC$696,000 which was already approved in the 2007 national budget. He said the aim of the expenditure was to fight crime on the island and he was saddened that despite this, and other efforts, there were still continuing acts of violence with the death of 18-year-old Javon Guishard on Friday, December 7.

Mr. Fleming said he was grieving for the parents of the murdered victim and also for the mother and family of the young man who committed the act. He warned that there was a need for serious concern about crime in Anguilla and that if it was not halted there could be grave consequences for the island.

“From this podium I want Patsy and her family and Mr. Guishard to know that I am with them in my prayers. I am as hurt as they are... to see my child die in my hand by the hands of someone who should not be in Anguilla. I hope a stop will be put to it,” Mr. Fleming stated.

He continued: “Mr Speaker, I have before me a list of persons who were arrested in Anguilla during the month of November 2007. I don’t want you to think I am targeting a certain type of people but I asked the police some time ago to make sure that they present to me a list of all the people that we allow in our country who get in trouble on a regular basis.

“We have problems with our own people but I asked to see how the people that we bring to our shores are behaving. In front of me I have [a list of] 25 nationals from overseas who were arrested in Anguilla for the month of November. There are crimes from wounding, grievous bodily harm, possession of cannabis to breach of the peace…I have said that if you come to Anguilla to live or work, you must behave yourself but if you cannot behave, you have to leave. I am not concerned who is mad with me today because I am mad …and I am sure that I have the support of Anguillians in this. And to the Anguillians, the message is: we expect better of you and we hope that you will continue to live a better life.”

The Chief Minister, whose portfolio includes Immigration and Labour, said there were families from aboard in Anguilla with teenage children who were not in school. “We have to tighten up or else we are going to get into trouble,” he went on. “Years ago we initiated a system of a visa requirement for Jamaicans, Guyanese and people from Santo Domingo… and I got blows from the people of Anguilla. I live to hear them say ‘God bless we did it.’ We have just imposed a requirement for Trinidadians and you will be alarmed to know the number of cases we have already with some of those nationals we have here. As I said, I am not against any foreigner but when you come here you must be a decent citizen.

“My people are tired that there is so much disrespect. Just recently in Blowing Point a guy came into the country and could not be subdued by three or four policemen and he is not from Anguilla. That is a measure of disrespect as far as I am concerned. We thank the foreign workers who have come to Anguilla and made a contribution and we will always have some of them here. But the time has come when we have to put on the reins a bit or else we will be strangers in our own land.

“There are hardworking people here from overseas but some of them are over-ambitious. How can I put my people at a disadvantage when someone is allowed to come here as a mason on a work permit…but is in the trucking business for somebody else? We have made it clear that certain jobs are for the people of Anguilla, but people from outside the island are taking advantage of the situation.”

The Chief Minister said his Ministry had taken a decision to put into place a quota system allowing a certain number of persons from a particular country. He stated that it was decided to suspend work permits for Dominica, one reason being that the island’s social services could not bear the burden. He also said that many people were living under bad conditions and that Anguilla could not wait until an epidemic broke out to take action. “There is a stay on people from Santo Domingo also. “We are saying we have a lot of you now. Ease off for now. That is the position we are taking and if needs be we will have to do it for other countries,” he further said. “The reason I am standing here is that Anguilla is being swamped with nationals from overseas who are good and bad and the time has come for us to be vigilant and make sure that we have the right people in our communities.”

Mr Fleming concluded: “When I consider the numbers of local and foreign investors who have spent millions of dollars and to lose it all [would be a shame]. It is time that we all say no to crime.”

Elected Member for Road North, Edison Baird, said all representatives in the House of Assembly had a responsibility to put party politics aside so as to come up with a strategy for reducing the level and severity of crime in Anguilla.

“Anguilla is not a big country but we are having too many murders and too many unsolved criminal acts and something must be done about it,” Baird said. “A the Chief Minister pointed out, it only takes one blow to drop the tourism industry to its feet and if you look at the way our economy is set up, tourism is the engine of growth…so it is very good that we do everything in our power to fight crime.”

First Nominated Member, Donna Banks, who is also Tourism Adviser in the Ministry of Finance, said that while additional funds had been given to the police, there was a need to do more in social development regarding young people and where they were being dropped. “We can spend as much money as we wish in the police force but the police force can never deal with that problem if we do not get to the root of the problem,” she asserted.
“I don’t want us to pay lip service to this whole area of social development and people are not performing the anguished and outspoken Donna Banks said. “These are areas where people must be moved by compassion and love and it can’t be a job that you do from your head. It has to be a job that you do from your heart and Mr. Minister [of Social Development] if you need help, there are lots of us out there who may not have the training, but we have the hearts of compassion and love and we do not want to see any more babies in Anguilla dropped because as we drop the babies that’s how we are going to see the crime increasing.”

Minister of Social Development, Evans Rogers, said the murder incident was a sad event for both sides of the families. “As policy-makers and members of the Government, we have to take a stand and put whatever is necessary in place in order to curb some of these undesirable acts within our society and no one is immune from them,” he said.

“It is a call that the Chief Minister mentioned in his presentation – not only the foreigners but the Anguillians as well. We have a responsibility to play in determining where we need Anguilla to go,” the Minister said. “It doesn’t matter how much money we put into the budget, if we don’t have the human resources and the compassion, and it is not coming from our heart, we will always be in this dilemma.

“We have been having a number of wake-up calls…We must be able to come together as Government, Opposition and as a community, bend our minds around what is happening and come up with something practical to help curb what its happening. It happens all over the world but it is too close to home in Anguilla. It is depressing, it is sad and it is unacceptable. We must be able to decide whether we will send out the foreigners if they do not behave themselves but when [the violence] involves our own Anguillians, what are we going to do with them?
Other Members who spoke on violence in Anguilla were Elected Representatives Kenneth Harrigan, Albert Hughes, Victor Banks and Second Nominated Member, Keesha Webster. Opposition Member Hubert Hughes was not present at the House of Assembly meeting.

While speaking on the supplementary budget, Mr. Banks mentioned the various opportunities that the economic development of Anguilla offered to Anguillians and other persons. “In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, the values which are the root of what we have been brought up to consider as important, are what we must demonstrate in our own behaviour so that when people come to this country they can understand that this is the deal – the values we have and how we want them to behave and what we expect from them,” he said.

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