The Caribbean squares off against crime

Crime and violence are on the flop side of those paradise-like tourist destinations of the Caribbean. In the face of this situation, regional authorities are looking for ways to protect an industry that plays a key role in their economies.

The fifteen members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and execs from the leisure industry requested a report be pieced together in an effort to find out what safety and security guidelines they should apply to protect foreign visitors.

One of the suggestions reveals the need of keeping foreigners posted on the country’s dangers, even tips on those places they shouldn’t visit to prevent travelers from getting trapped in criminal situations in which ordinary citizens would never dare butt in.

The fact of the matter is that even when lots of sunbathers are usually determined to spend their vacations under the protection of hotel centers, cut off from any contact with the local population, bolder trekkers dare paying visits to unknown and sometimes dangerous locations.

The report, knocked together with the help of the Organization of American States (OAS), the Canadian government and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), was presented to government representatives within the framework of the Caribbean Conference of Police Commissioners.

The making of the report was funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) through its Caribbean Program for Economic Competitiveness and the Development of Human Resources (CPEC) headquartered in Santa Lucia.

The problem of crime is raising deep concerns in some of the region’s most coveted tourist destinations like Jamaica, an island of barely 2.8 million inhabitants where over 600 people have been murdered so far this year. That deadly figure rose to 1,045 murders in 2002.

The report also points out that sometimes tourists themselves commit crimes and regardless of being few and far between, these foreign wrongdoers are regrettably released “to protect the region’s brittle tourist industry.”

The research study also blasts what it calls “scarce sensitivity” on the part of law enforcement officers when dealing with victimized tourists and the frustration they are subject to as they notice authorities’ seemingly lack of interest in protecting them.

Another recommendation suggests the need of providing foreign visitors with a list of prices of those goods and services that tourists go for the most.

It similarly requests more resources to tackle drug dealers and smugglers who every so often use these small Caribbean islands as transit points for their deadly cargo en route to the huge international markets.

According to the report, in some Caribbean islands there’s no “tourism culture” and it calls on their citizens to do their best in order to “protect their countries’ largest source of revenues.”

Up to now, programs to improve safety and security for travelers, as well as hospitality courses for employees in the sector have only been realized in the form of seminars taught in Barbuda, Dominique, St. Kitts & Nevis and Santa Lucia.

Trinidad & Tobago will organize a huge regional symposium this month on safety and security in Caribbean tourist destinations.