December 12, 2018. Returning Residents are Jamaicans so named because they have lived, worked abroad and have returned home, in some cases to retire, to invest, or to continue working and sharing their many years of experience and expertise. However, after any significant period of time abroad, the process of returning to reside takes planning and requires accurate information before relocating to the land of one’s birth.
Access Jamaica Network, a WhatsApp group, founded by Theo Chambers, marketing guru, was abuzz with posts responding to a video that spread across the social media like wildfire last week (week of Dec. 3, 2018). The video showed an unidentified woman driving a motorcar who faced the camera as she described three murders of returning residents. Appealing to viewers not to return to Jamaica, she rationalized that after working abroad, saving their hard-earned money to buy their dream homes, they could be targeted and killed.
While the woman in the video offered one dire solution to a string of murders of which she mentioned three, the members of Access Jamaica Network offered several solutions some of which are mentioned herein. Returning Residents were dissuaded from returning to their old neighborhoods to build large homes, becoming targets, instead they were encouraged to live in gated communities. Dr. Marcia Brandon sustainable development entrepreneur who has lived in Barbados and worked in the region for almost 30 years, a daughter of the Jamaican soil, who intends to return home in the near future, agreed with Sharon Oshun Chambers, author & public relations consultant, who called for a peaceful march on Jamaica to bring the returning resident community together and help eliminate fear. Brandon said “mobilize members in all parishes and march on Jamaica to take action; we need our returning residents and there is no way we can just let them be harmed and killed and we sit back and take it”. Chambers suggested a town a town hall meeting, inviting government agencies to help find solutions.