PRESIDENT Dr. Irfaan Ali has acted appropriately and rightly in calling attention to school-related gang violence.
This is because an escalation in school-related crimes related to gangs is an indication that police authorities, school administrators, and society in general have to take action to rectify this.
The President’s call to active response is in motion. Violence in school gangs is not something to be answered to in policing; it is a complicated issue in society that has to be answered to in every manner.

Challenging the Guyana Police Force to think beyond conventional policing is an indication that Dr. Ali has an acute sensitivity to this threat emerging.
Indeed, the evolution of gangs in school is seriously in full shape now, not just in Guyana, but also in the Caribbean.
This evolution can have potential to disestablish school life foundations and children’s safety. The most recent attack by 17 youths upon a student who was just 14 at the West Demerara Secondary School is an eye opener to this issue’s scale.

President Ali’s call to embrace an overall forward response is to be applauded. His realisation that crime by gangs is most routinely bred by widespread society, family, and individual failures is an absolute prerequisite to solving this condition by solving the source.

Certainly, reaction to things in response is no longer an option; preventive action addressing the source has to be put in motion.
The proposal to have an early childhood development specialist training programme to cultivate instructors’ capacity to address these problems is most attractive. If we can empower instructors with tools to detect and respond to potential problems related to gangs early in life, we can have an in-school first defence.

However, the work is not simply left to school administrators and police officers. We have to get behind something that provides an environment where children can be valued, nurtured, and have something better to turn to than gangs. This is including addressing problems in unemployment, poverty, and dysfunctional families.

The time is now. We can no longer procrastinate until things get dire. This future is in children’s hands, with the expectation that depends on our ability to tackle this nascent evil in an appropriate manner.
We ought to respond to President Ali’s call to action, and act in solidarity towards making schools safe, and giving better future results to each Guyanese student.