Dear Editor,

Information technology has been shining the light on the dark state of affairs our island is facing. The unwelcome pandemic has fast-tracked the increasing use of various electronic screens, exposing the Jamaican reality.

With ‘outside’ closed, and the cameras rolling inside Jamaica’s eye, it is plainly shown how deep we are in social depravity. Some of the incidents are a six-year-old killed by 15-year-old cousin, five-year-old buggered, teen killed by adult lover, toddler given cigarette to smoke and alcohol to drink, infant gyrating on adults, baby left in car while mother attends carnival event, and a host of other shocking revelations.

The adults themselves are a mess upgrading the revelations with a whole long line of domestic abuse and murder videos filling up your phone’s memory. Now in the headlines, ‘Man stabs ex-lover to death because of break up’ and ‘Woman abducted, raped and murdered’ have angered society causing loud protest with fingers pointed at parliamentarians. The issues continue to smoke-up the country like an out of control Riverton dump on fire.

There are calls to enact legislation making it legal for especially women to carry pepper sprays and tasers for their protection. While those suggestions seem viable, the root of the problem is not a tangible one, but rather more of a social nature. We cannot be daunted by the recent reports which revealed that spending billions on social intervention programmes over a 10-year span did not bear much fruits. The primary solution is still with social intervention building a foundation of discipline, values and positive attitude in the home.

The lack of proper parenting has resulted in an increase in crime, violence and the indisciplined behaviour of Jamaicans. The call should be for the Parenting Commission to address the issue of parenting, and the Government should seek to saturate the troubled schools and communities with social workers and targeted social programmes, which could deal with sex and sexuality, anger management, conflict resolution, self-esteem, and self worth. The fact is that increase security personnel will not solve the root of our problems. Fighting fire with fire will only leads to larger flames.

Hezekan Bolton

h_e_z_e@hotmail.com