Black River, St. Elizabeth
COLONEL OF THE Accompong Maroons in St. Elizabeth Sydney Peddie, has high praises for the Tourism Product Development Company TPDCo for its effort in trying to develop Accompong as a tourism product over the last three years.
"We the maroons owe TPDCo a great deal for the effort through cash and kind that were pumped into our community to establish and promote tourism in the area and as promised by the agency we're looking forward to phase three of this development," Colonel Peddie said.
Peddie was speaking at a recent ceremony to rededicate the Invercauld Hotel in Black River on Friday. He said because of the input of TPDCo in Accompong, they have been able to showcase and highlight their history and achievements, which was accomplished more than 300 years ago. "One remarkable thing that I can tell you is that Accompong is crime free and it is something that we the maroons are proud of. It is also a fact that anyone, whether foreign or local, wishing to know the history of Jamaica cannot comprehensively do so without knowing the history of the maroons," Colonel Peddie stressed.
Despite this however, over the last month and a half the Maroon Board of Elders, the Maroon Council and the interested candidates in the current maroon elections are at odds, over who should vote and who should not, in the pending election for a new colonel to lead the Maroon Council for the next five years.
Chief among the concerns is the problem of arriving at a voters list that should be used in the election. Another problem is that some of the candidates are claiming that some of the persons on the current voters list are not maroons.
