Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Mar 03, 2011 Editorial
On Tuesday the police shot and wounded a 17-year-old Albouystown lad who had robbed a 70-year-old pensioner minutes earlier. This happened in South Georgetown, close to the depressed communities of Charlestown and Albouystown.
But even before this the country has been noting a significant number of young criminals. There was the notorious Cobra who was only 17 when he decided to surrender after he heard from his hiding place in the Le Repentir Cemetery that the police would kill him on sight.
Another teenager was chased down and shot on Mandela Avenue after a robbery attempt in the vicinity of the gas station on Mandela Avenue. A teenager was the prime suspect in the fatal shooting of a patron at Cool Square. This teen was caught on surveillance camera shooting and attempting to rob the business place.
Teen exploits abound. Before the courts on a charge with causing public terror is a lad no more than sixteen. He was implicated in the burning of the Ministry of Health building and the subsequent shooting spree in the city.
But the most frightening of all were the young gunmen who terrorised this country during the crime wave. Most were aged between fourteen and seventeen. Very few would forget that when the police closed in on a hiding place in Buxton and killed six of the young gunmen, it turned out that the eldest was Romel Reman who was only 21. The others were virtually children none of them older than sixteen. Romel Reman, became a career criminal when he was in his teens.
If the nation believed that these were aberrant then they only need to cast their mind back to the days after the police sanitised Buxton. The one killed at Christmas Falls, named Mud Up, was 15; the other killed along the trail with the notorious Cecil Simeon Ramcharran, called Uncle Willie, was a 15-year-old called Chung Boy.
Without a doubt the criminals are so much younger. It is as if the young men, particularly those from the depressed communities, are increasingly turning to a life of crime because the elders in the society have impressed on them that there is no easier way to make a quick dollar.
The society must protect itself by creating opportunities for the young people. The saying that the devil finds work for idle hands is apt. Young people have active minds and it is this that often pushes them to the next course of action. Recognising this, most societies establish youth clubs and other organizations that allow for the social interaction by young people. These organisations are spearheaded by the elders in the society.
Then there are the sports clubs. Many people have gravitated from the sports clubs to become internationally recognised. Guyana has had its share of such people. In the field of cricket we have had Clive Lloyd and Lance Gibbs and Rohan Kanhai and Joe Solomon and so many others.
The situation is the same in other areas. These are the people who have lent of their time to help fashion young people but who have had to move away because of the lack of support.
The story is the same for organisations that attempt to channel the attention and energies of girls. With the focus on women there have been some organisations that are more focused on productive efforts than on social things. Not too many women have been directed to sports because sports itself has not been a major factor in national development in recent times. The result is that not many private business organisations have seen the need to offer help.
The absence of such support is proving to be very costly. People are being preyed on and the very private sector organisations are recording declining sales because people are simply afraid. They are becoming wary of accessing large sums of money from the commercial banks and even more wary of taking this sum to the private sector entities.
The Guyana National Service was one of the organizations that harnessed the energies and resources of young people. There is no such organisation these days. The result is that the energetic young people are finding anti-social ways much to the annoyance and fear of the nation.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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