\u2022 \u2018Operation Restore Paradise\u2019 extended for another 90 days<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Barrington Flemming<\/strong> – Staff Reporter<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The perennial \u2018cat\nand mouse\u2019 game between street vendors and the police in Montego Bay is set to\ncontinue for a while yet, with a 90-day extension of \u2018Operation Restore\nParadise\u2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The week-long initiative, which was jointly crafted by the\nSt. James Municipal Corporation and the Police to restore law and order to the\ncity of Montego Bay, was extended after reaping relative success in its first\nseven days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In recapping the success of the multi-agency initiative,\nMayor of Montego Bay, Councillor Homer Davis, said during the week, there were\n60 arrests with 27 persons charged for various offences and one stolen motor\nvehicle recovered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Additionally, the Island Traffic Authority removed 26\nregistration plates from PPV, commercial and private vehicles and from 1,500\nmotor vehicles searched, 1,000 persons prosecuted and tints removed from 49 PPV\nvehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chief Public Health Inspector for the parish of St. James,\nLennox Wallace, said 16 of 75 food establishments which were inspected were\nclosed for breaching public health standards. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n FOOD THROWN OUT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Wallace said to\nfurther safeguard consumers\u2019 health, over $400,000 worth of food that was being\noffered to the public under unsatisfactory conditions was seized and disposed\noff. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He also indicated that 29 notices were served on itinerant\nstreet vendors for various public health breaches and 26 vendors\u2019 stalls were\ndemolished and removed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe know that Montego Bay is a city that does not sleep\n(and) throughout the rest of the operation we intend to not only have visits\nduring the day as there are establishments and vendors who operate only at\nnights, covering all of Barnett Street from \u2018Clock\u2019 down to the entrance of the\nTransport Centre, Strand Street, the intersection of St James and Union streets\nand Jimmy Cliff Boulevard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ELECTRICITY THEFT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, JPS Director for Distribution South West, Leroy\nReid, disclosed that \u201cduring the period we participated, there were\napproximately 400 \u2018throw-ups\u2019 or line taps that were removed; we conducted\napproximately 50 audits and we disconnected 70 shops within the Shoe Market for\nthe illegal abstraction of electricity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said the JPS was encouraged by the extension and will be\nusing the next few days \u201cto learn from our experiences over the last several\ndays and put in place a more robust plan and stronger intervention measures to\nhelp us restore paradise in Montego Bay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The week-long joint operation also saw 45 pounds of ganja\nvalued at $500,000 being seized and 1.5 million banned plastic (lada) bags\nseized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The perennial \u2018cat and mouse\u2019 game between street vendors and the police in Montego Bay is set to continue for a while yet, with a 90-day extension of \u2018Operation Restore Paradise\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1295,1296],"class_list":["post-2382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-food","tag-jps-director"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2383,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382\/revisions\/2383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}