Holness not committed to social intervention
THE EDITOR, Sir:
IT’S INTERESTING. Finance Minister Nigel Clarke has proposed supplementary spending of $18 billion, $445 million of it to the police. Police Commissioner Antony Anderson and army chief Major General Rocky Meade say more would go to security if money were there.
Anderson went so far as to say – if The Gleaner has not misquoted him, I hope it has – that with more resources, “there are few parishes where a state of emergency would not be declared”. Am I hearing rightly? That is to put virtually the ENTIRE ISLAND under police and soldier rule! I repudiate that.
So great is the fixation on one set of tools that not a dollar is allocated to social intervention, not one dollar! By social intervention, I mean the kind that tackles not just IDs and TRNs, but deep problem sources – the deprivation in communities leaving thousands of youth gasping for opportunity. Is the Opposition insisting in the PAAC that the Supplementary Estimates include that kind of social input?
Repression alone, namely shooting and murder, has never, over 56 years, produced a lasting solution. It is puzzling that the idea of an ‘army’ of civilian ‘violence interrupters’ and social workers and the FACT of a detachment of this army already demonstrating achievements in small areas have not penetrated the heads of our decision-makers and drawn any response. Evidently, that is asking too much.
The real need, mind you, is for the full implications of such an approach. It is for a national mobilisation, the kind we saw against chik-V and ZIKV. Not just the Ministry of Health, but also the local government and community, education, and national security ministries were brought into play. No cost was spared to treat real and suspected cases of the disease AND to eradicate its mosquitobreeding sources all over the island. The involvement of community people and the private sector was called on, and not just in words.
This is what the national scourge of murder demands – without delay. It demands that every state agency make its contribution in deprived communities, whether by road and gully repair, health clinic and basic school, or by sewage pipes and school toilets, infrastructure of every kind. These would provide the employment, some of it quite technical, alongside on-the-job training, with appropriate wages, that young men and women crave.
Yes, money is required. But since at least five per cent of GDP, or $87.5 billion, was lost to crime last year, 2017, according to World Bank and IDB calculations, the minimum of a quarter of that needs to be spent on community rebuilding and youth mainstreaming. And I mean annually for the next five years. This would be the gamechanger that this country deserves.
Come on, Andrew Holness, the ball is in your court. HORACE LEVY halpeace.levy78@gmail.com