Senior prosecutor urges students to make the best of education
A senior member in the legal fraternity is urging young people to make the best of their education so that they can overcome prejudice in the society, as Jamaica, he insists, still mirrors the plantation system.
Senior Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Jeremy Taylor, who made the call, said students must use their time in school to become “excellent citizens” because Jamaica is dominated by “class, colour and wealth”.
“You need to see how some of the COVID-19 measures are enforced in this country by the police — different stick for some, versus a different stick for other persons,” Taylor said while delivering the keynote address at Kitson Town Primary School Past Students Association’s recent awards ceremony held at Church of God Fellowship Ministries in St Catherine.
The deputy DPP, who is a Queen’s Counsel (QC), added that people in the Jamaican society with class, colour, and wealth are influential and powerful and “tend to have an attitude that they are born to rule. This country is not too far removed from the plantation,” he argued.
He told the students that they are fortunate to live in a free community like Kitson Town, and they should get a good education so that they can claim their place, and not do as the powerful who do so by “gift”.
The deputy DPP also urged the students to grasp sound information and achieve excellence, while developing good character.
Meanwhile, president of the association, Garfield Angus, lamented the issues faced by the group to get a venue to host the function, while “noise makers” can have their parties up to late at nights.
“We tried two churches in the community, and we [were] rejected. So we became like rolling stones, and wandering sheep. Then came the Seventh-Day Church of God Fellowship Ministries to our rescue. Anybody, or any church that can’t host what we are doing. This is to celebrate education, and those who are doing well in education and for education, and for some persons to see it as unworthy, or if it can defile your sanctuary, then I don’t know where we are going,” Angus said.
