Training inner-city youth is critical

Ken Chaplin

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

THERE was a significant development in an inner-city community recently with the establishment of a new computer centre at the Admiral Town Police Station in South St Andrew. The development is significant because it will serve rival communities in the constituency — meaning that students will be able to cross borders to attend the institution and obtain training in information technology without fearing that they will be attacked. Political strife has set back some of the inner-city communities in the South St Andrew constituency for many years. Sometimes children have been unable to go to school because of tribal wars which got the people nowhere.

The practice of exclusiveness in inner-city communities where the people of one community are at risk if they enter another community must be eliminated if peace is to be sustained in rival inner cities, which is essential to social and economic development. Important surveys of living standards to gather information for planned development have been hampered in the past because those conducting the surveys were afraid to go into certain violence-prone areas.

For too long, politicians, including some members of parliament, have done very little to discourage the violence because they stand to benefit from it in elections. Therefore, Dr Omar Davies, MP for South St Andrew, the Violence Prevention Alliance and the Ministry of Health’s Learning Network Programme are to be commended for establishing the centre, one of 20 set up under the programme. It is a programme that conscious inner-city leaders and dons should support to the maximum because education and training is key to the economic and social development of the communities and a better way of life for the people. They should not allow politics and politicians to prevent them from going forward.

More such programmes to improve inner-city communities are needed in Jamaica. Some of these communities are mired in the kind of poverty only seen in the poorest of countries. In Jamaica, the full extent of the poverty has not been fully exposed. One has to visit the areas to see the poverty and appreciate the crisis. No matter how much the police force and the army are improved in manpower and weaponry, the problem of crime and violence is going to continue on a massive scale, unless we improve the social condition of the people.

Today most inner-city leaders, unlike many of those in the 1970s and 1980s, have grasped the importance of education which they never got, primarily because of the neglect of their parents and guardians. While I was working with the Central Peace Council (comprised of ghetto gang leaders) to preserve the peace movement in certain communities in Kingston and St Andrew in the 1970s, I was surprised by the number of illiterates for whom I had to complete various forms. I found that dealing with those illiterates was far more difficult than working with the young men who could read and write. For one thing, you could reason with the latter who had a better temperament.

I also observed that treating the young people with respect earned their respect.

Years ago under JAMAL, the literacy organisation, thousands of illiterates were taught to read and write in programmes across the country and were able to make a meaningful contribution to themselves and communities. They were not taught anything but literacy as many of them were already in jobs, and they used this newly acquired tool to improve themselves to go forward quickly. Of course, some were embarrassed when their friends found out that they were attending JAMAL classes. A few dropped out of the classes, but the vast majority continued to a proud graduation and a better standard of living.

A new institution took over from JAMAL, the Jamaica Foundation for Lifelong Learning, which taught people not only to read and write, but also taught them skills and various subjects to broaden their perspective and to earn a livelihood. The exercise was much longer than the literacy classes, but a more rounded citizen is being produced. We need many more JFLL centres in the island to beat ignorance and illiteracy.

Stony Hill under siege

Stony Hill and its environs, which were relatively free of crime a few years ago, is now under siege from criminals. Over the past two weeks, the New Stony Hill Pharmacy has been robbed twice: once the thieves entered through the roof. Also robbed in the square were Tastee, a supermarket and a shop and other business places. Pedestrians were also held up and robbed. Fear permeates the communities. There were several breakings of motor vehicles and homes in the environs.

There is a severe shortage of police personnel and patrol cars at the Stony Hill Police Station, and residents are calling on the government to increase the number of police personnel and vehicles. The station serves 57 districts in the constituency but has only one patrol. The sub-officer in charge of the station has pointed out that several people who were detained have had to be released because of the lack of evidence and they may go and steal again. This, he said, contributed to the problem. He said that the situation will continue unless the citizens cooperate. “Given the shortage of manpower and transportation we are doing our best, but citizens must play their part by coming forward to identify accused and stolen goods,” he said.

Another problem facing police personnel is the dilapidated condition of the the 19th century building which houses the police station. Accommodation there is miserable for the occupants. For sometime now there has been a plan to build a new station, but it is yet to get off the ground. The number of damaged cars parked on the road in front of the building is causing a traffic hazard.

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COMMENTS (1)

Beresford Davidson
3/16/2010

The culture of depriving others of knowing why, and knowing how, their health and their world became the way it has become, has been the heart of poverty everywhere in this world. When humans know, why and how things become an instant in their eyes at a given time, they fully gained an understanding as to why these things happened and they quickly command a position of know-how to prevent undesirable situations from overwhelming their sense of control. People also acquire the know-why, which they educate their love-ones what not and what should be done to prevent and correct.
Such a culture steep in exclusivity to the commoner, unwittingly celebrate a discourse in wrong doing by exposing their favorite sons and/or daughters to that phenomenon that which is favorably exquisite and exclusive to an infatuated majority. This is what I called the tyranny of the few, upon the ignorance of a humbled majority. These shiny new manmade things built from inspiration, time and effort, producing such artifacts as knowledge or shiny new things of excellence, exclusive to the exposure of the commoner but at their expense of time and effort, marginalized and imprisoned the ignorant and the poor into believing in their self-doubts and deep-seated anger.
“ No matter how much the police force and the army are improved in manpower and weaponry, the problem of crime and violence is going to continue on a massive scale, unless we improve the social condition of the people.”
Your quote above needs correction: it should express the thought you created above in a positive manor such as what I rewrite herein as thus: ‘No matter how much the police force and the army are improved in manpower and weaponry, the problem of crime and violence is going to continue on a massive scale, unless Jamaicans take matters into their own hands and improve their social condition.’ No exclusive group can continue to baby-sit a people who are capable but lead to believe they are not.

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Police threat level at extreme

Training inner-city youth is critical