THE headlines are screaming of the delinquency of Guyana’s juveniles: ganging up on other students and injuring them, even with death sometimes being the consequence; attacking teachers, with in at least one instance a teacher being severely injured, just for instructing a group of students loitering in the corridors to return to their classroom; male students molesting females; and teenage aberrations, including schoolgirls’ pregnancies.And, depending on parental guidance, to steer them on the right pathway is often a lost cause, because oftentimes, even the parents don’t know that pathway of righteousness. In fact, in most instances, the parents are also culprits who choose a divergent pathway and inculcate anti-social behavioural characteristics in their children, many of whom eventually become hard-core criminals with no respect for the rights and sanctity of property of others, not even for the lives of their victims.
As one letter-writer, Neil Adams, has observed, inter alia: “I do not think persons in Guyana are really taking note of what is going on in our country, Region 4 in particular…I speak of the spate of blood-curdling murders that seems to hit the headlines on a daily basis…”
The spate and level of these horrific crimes is beyond comprehension, and to add fuel to the fire, is the youthfulness of the offenders, teen-aged girls included. Truly, I believe serious crimes of a juvenile nature have reached an all-time high, and if something is not done soon enough, our country would have become one of those crime capitals, if not the crime capital, of the Caribbean.
We are most certainly nearing the top; judging from Guyana’s low population and the high incidence of murders, we are at the pinnacle of things. We have now grown accustomed to the notoriety of being called the “Murder Capital of the Caribbean”.
Let us review a few of these horror stories. The murder of taxi driver Rubindranauth Jeeboo; his life brutally snuffed out by three teenagers who stole his car then strangled him to death.
Just a week later, the same trio ambushed Raphael Campbell and did the very same thing: stole his taxi and killed him too. These are horror stories of the worst kind, and, most troubling to say the least, committed by youngsters who can be so bold and daring at such a tender age. Then, heaven help us! What would our country be like when these youngsters become adults and are still allowed to roam freely among us?
According to a recent report in the Guyana Chronicle, a police patrol in the South Ruimveldt area recently stopped and searched two teenagers and discovered in their possession a deadly assault M-16 rifle, ammunition, and the equally deadly accessories of grenades in their possession, which further underscores the frightening fact of the presence of high-velocity weaponry, and their easy acquisition, by whomsoever, for what definite evil and murderous activity criminals plan and execute.
Samuel Johnson, 17, and Kevin George, 18, the youths found with the semi-arsenal, were arrested and have since been charged, placed before the court, and subsequently remanded to prison.
Another headline read, “11-yr-old student stabs classmate in eye – in alleged chucking incident, where pointed object penetrated deeply into the eye, causing wound to bleed considerably”.
According to the article, “11-year-old Ishmael Pollard, a student of St. George’s Secondary School…was stabbed in the left eye with a pointed object by another male classmate….The pointed object penetrated deeply into the eye, causing the wound to bleed considerably.”
What was shocking was that the aggressor’s father, instead of scolding his aberrant son (What was he doing with a sharply pointed object in school?) defended him.
Shortly after this incident, another headline appeared, which read: “10-yr-old charged with robbery under arms”. The article continued: “A 10-year-old boy, along with an adult, yesterday pleaded not guilty to a robbery under arms charge before Magistrate Sherdel Marcus-Issacs at the New Amsterdamn Court. The minor, a Grade Five student, along with Hubert Elgin, known as “Squeeks”, a construction worker…is alleged to have been armed with a broken glass bottle when they allegedly robbed Coretta Lewis.”
Yet another headline read, “Student fined for cutlass in haversack”, wherein the article stated: “A 16-year-old student of Tucville Secondary School was ordered to pay a fine by Magistrate Geeta Chandan-Edmonds at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court yesterday.
“According to the prosecutor….police ranks noticed the youngster on Commerce Street, acting in a suspicious manner. As he was walking, he was reportedly stopped by the ranks and the search revealed a cutlass hidden in his haversack.”
Don’t parents know what is contained in their children’s schoolbags? 12-year-old Rico Edwards and his 14-year-old sister, Romena, were travelling home in a bus when a young man pointed an ice-pick at Rico and robbed him of his expensive cellphone and his school haversack. Romena knew what the textbooks had cost Rico’s grandmother, and she sprinted after the thief.
Onlookers ran after him and caught him, retrieving Rico’s belongings. If Rico had resisted, he might have been dead today. Obviously, he had been trailed by the predator, who had no qualms about robbing a fellow schoolboy.
Neil Adams posited in his letter: “The Opposition, by their mindless antics in parliament, have given these bandits and would-be bandits tacit support. They have not, to date, openly condemned these acts of criminality; rather, they’ve been politicising the whole issue by blaming the victims and the Government, among other things.
“These acts only embolden the felons and, as seen in those matters cited above, encourage new and younger recruits for criminal activity. These serious crimes are taking place in their strongholds, so what have they done to rectify or turn this around?
“What have they done for the youths in their constituencies? Instead of using them to gain cheap political mileage in times of so called protests, why not go down into their communities and source out avenues that would lead them away from a life of crime?”
However, there has been a serious endeavour by some youths in various communities to channel their energies into productive exercises. Working together with absolute camaraderie in these initiatives are young people from across every racial divide. This is a hopeful indicator that someday in the near future, opposition politicians would not be able to use its supporters as cannon fodder and bait to derail democratic processes and norms in the country, because they are recognising and enjoying being a part of their community-building and citizen-development and enhancement programmes.
These youngsters are attempting to reach productive goals, especially in restoring the societal balance so urgently needed to sustain peaceful and supportive roles with the framework of the community.
Government officials have been working diligently with the young people of the various regions and lending support in a multiplicity of ways in an integrated, holistic approach to getting them involved in healthy activities, such as competitive sports and skills development, along with creative and character-building exercises such as poetry-reading, elocution, debates, drama, inter-secondary schools debating competitions, et cetera, in efforts to resuscitate community life.
Counselling is also being provided, and comprehensive computer and related training programmes are also in the works. An official said that these activities are a countrywide initiative that are not extraneous to the formal educational concepts in the school system, but will be compatible with and adjunctive to the ruling party’s grounding in the working-class people of the country through community developmental exercises, especially targeting the young.
“We are also hoping to provide counselling in conflict resolution and other psycho-social dynamics; career guidance to, but not limited to, young people,” said one official, who continued: “We are hoping to extend our reach to NGOs that provide counselling in anger-management and other related areas, such as sports counselling. These initiatives are certain to redound to greater care and love within the social landscape of the communities nationwide.”
That these initiatives are succeeding immeasurably is attested to by the group of young volunteers from across every divide, whose selfless and committed voluntary work is generating the interest and involvement of many young people who were once seen as deviants within their respective communities.
A senior staff member of the Chronicle was riveted by the sight one morning of a young student in St. Stanislaus College uniform, who, although with just minutes to reach school on time, had stopped to help an old lady supporting herself by a walker to cross a puddle on the road.
The Chronicle staffer stopped her taxi and offered the youngster money as a reward for his good deed, but he refused.
The youngster, Mike Linton Jnr, is a bright star who is a tribute to the upbringing of his parents, Mike Linton Snr and Rachel Fraser, as well as to his school, where he is a Third Form student. His actions and refusal of any reward for helping that old lady, even at risk of arriving late at school, is testimony to the fact that Guyana’s young people are not quite lost, but with the right approach, can become productive and responsible citizens of this country, with potential for leadership, instead of criminal pursuits to which they are directed by self-serving politicians who only crave power, with their supporters, especially the young whom they are training in the art of banditry, being “collateral damage”.
The difference between the Government and the Opposition is that the former enables and empowers youths through education, techvoc and skills development programmes, provides them with houselots and enables funding through low-interest loans to build homes and enable wealth creation activities; while the Opposition calls them “Buxton Resistance”, members of which kill babies asleep in their beds.