WESTMORELAND, Jamaica — Opposition Spokesperson on Education Damion Crawford has bemoaned what he claims is the suffering of children in Jamaica under the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) administration.

Addressing the 88th anniversary conference of the opposition People’s National Party (PNP) on Sunday, Crawford used the well-known Bible verse Matthew 19:14 — where Jesus tells his disciples to suffer the children to come to him — to hammer home his point.

“The JLP seem to misunderstand that statement and thinks he meant to literally make the children suffer. I am here today to correct them, that when he said suffer the little children, he did not mean for the children to suffer,” he stated.

Crawford, who is also Member of Parliament for St Catherine North Western, argued that under the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH), a child is provided with $250 for lunch when a beef patty costs $320.

“The JLP is allowing our children to suffer,” asserted Crawford,  pointing to widening inequality and social issues.

“Not only that they can’t get a lunch, they have to go into a line of segregation for the children of the poor to face embarrassment because they’re waiting on rice and gravy with the hope that a piece of chicken foot escapes,” he argued.

While not providing the source of his data, Crawford further claimed that over the last 10 years, 60,000 young girls have given birth before completing their teenage years, while more than 100,000 children go to school hungry.

“I am not used to a Jamaica where they are exposing our children to gambling, to promiscuity, to alcohol, to abuse. I am used to a country where they say that the village raised the child,” he insisted.

“We must return Jamaica to a Jamaica that we’re comfortable with. I am not comfortable with a Jamaica where we don’t remember that we are our brothers’ keepers. To where we see people celebrating other Jamaicans losing their homes, calling them squatters. To where we have to choose between whether we are at the top of the table with murder or at the top of the table with police killing,” added Crawford.

The St Catherine North Western MP called for the building of a “coalition of conscience”.

“I don’t believe there is none among us, whether baldhead or Rasta, who believe that the people should be allowed to suffer. And so comrades we must open the party and welcome all those who are willing and all those who are able to join us in this People’s National Party,” Crawford said.