Golding calls for ZOSO Act amendment
Elimination of 60-day expiry date, increased mobility in zones suggestions for change
OPPOSITION Leader Mark Golding has urged the Government to make changes to the Zones of Special Operations (ZOSOS) Act to incorporate provisions which reflect a more long-term strategy for the administration of the operations.
He noted that although a joint select committee has long completed its review of the Act, three years after its enactment as set out in the law, no move has been made to apply the amendment.
“One of the things that were supposed to be changed in the Act is the frequency with which one has to bring the matter here for extensions — some of these zones have been in effect now for well over five years, but every 60 days the minister has to come here to seek approval of orders extending the zones for a further 60 days. Given that the strategy in these communities is long term, I think we need to modify those provision quickly so that we’re not spending so much precious parliamentary time dealing with these renewals or roll-overs of these ZOSO orders…it’s overdue,” Golding stated.
He was speaking in light of orders taken to Parliament on Tuesday by National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang for a further extension of the seven ZOSOS now in place, some of them since 2018.
Golding also raised concerns about the operations of the security forces in the zones, and their effectiveness.
“Essentially, there are sedentary checkpoints across many zones where police and soldiers sit under a tent for many hours but there isn’t really sufficient attention being paid to what may be going on in fairly close proximity, so you have flair-ups of intense violence even in a community that has been under a zone for over five years,” he said, pointing to recent violence and killings in Denham Town.
“Why don’t we have more variation of the strategy to have more mobility in the communities, rather than have them immobilised at checkpoints. For hours on end, many of them are on their phones cramped with boredom, because nothing is happening right there, but there are issues in close proximity.”
He said this could be supported by CCTV, making the activities of the security forces less predictable to wrongdoers.
“The security tactics that are being employed are inadequate and it kind of brings the zones into disrepute when you see a situation where a community that has had hundreds of millions of dollars expended on it in social improvement, way beyond what is available to other communities which are in similar situations. And yet still, violence continues to be a problem there.”
Dr Chang further advised that efforts have been made to dynamise deployment in the zones: “All the checkpoints will not be removed, but we will seek to have more activity in and around the areas — the security chiefs are in every area and we are moving to improve that, to ensure that they have mobility and they have the required equipment and so forth.”
Regarding updating the legislation, Dr Chang said an approach is being pursued that could see medium-term solutions which may include annual reports on the zones, thereby enabling Government to evaluate the zones and use the associated data.
Meanwhile, he said police statistics show that as at January 27, for the period prior to and during the declaration of the ZOSOS, all areas recorded reductions in all major crimes, including murder.
The House approved extensions for ZOSOS in August Town, Greenwich Town, Parade Gardens, and Denham Town, in the Corporate Area; Mount Salem, and Norwood in St James; and Savanna-la-mar in Westmoreland.