Last week, British Prime Minister David Cameron became the first British leader to visit the island of Jamaica in 14 years.

However, his historic trip to announce funding for a new prison and infrastructure in the Caribbean nation was overshadowed by the Jamaican government's call for him to make reparations and apologize for Britain's role in the transatlantic slave trade. In response, Cameron instead urged Caribbean countries to "move on."

"I do hope that, as friends who have gone through so much together since those darkest of times, we can move on from this painful legacy and continue to build for the future," said Cameron on Wednesday addressing MPs in Jamaica's parliament, calling slavery "abhorrent in all its forms," reports BBC News.

The prime minister did, however, acknowledge the impact that slavery has had.

"These wounds run very deep," he said, adding that Britain's role in wiping slavery "off the face of our planet" should never be forgotten.

The main points of his speech focused on the U.K.'s initiative to invest £300m into the country's infrastructure to build roads, ports and bridges and "reinvigorate" ties with the region. He also pledged £25m in British aid for a new prison foreign criminals can be sent back home to the Caribbean rather than serve their sentences in the U.K.

Pharaoh Hamid-Freeman told CBC Montreal's "Daybreak" that the Caribbean is deserving of an apology and reparations.

"For us to be able to get reparations, it would show that the rest of the world has acknowledged the fact that we did go through something terrible," said Freeman, whose is of Trinidad and Tobago descent. "To tell us to get over it -- how can we get over it while we're still living it today?"

Howard "Stretch" Carr said reparations would help the community heal but he is doubtful that it will ever happen.

"How do we move on from our past because our past shapes our future? I'm really not dreaming. I don't see Britain paying all their past colonies for what they have done," said Carr.

Carr added that Cameron's investment in a new Jamaican prison is misguided.

"Why not build schools? Because we need that instead of more prisons," he said.

Supporters of reparations also argue that slave owners were compensated when Britain emancipated slaves in 1833. In total, the equivalent of £17 billion in compensation money was granted to 46,000 of Britain's slave-owners for "loss of human property," according to a database of those compensated compiled by the University College London.