Dear Editor,
The constant rise of crime in Guyana is a perpetual phenomenon, and a very frightening situation among our young women of late and young men. As I watched the news and read the papers, I am flabbergasted at the vast number of young women who are into the drug trafficking business, and are being sentenced and fined heavily by our courts.
These are very young women who are involved in these drug crimes. Also, young men we see daily involved in robbery-under-arms, murder, rape, drug trafficking; and the long dismal list of crime daily goes on. This does not mean that older drug dealers are not involved by using these young people as their ‘’scapegoats’’ to carry out their insidious acts. We also saw on the news that different types of drugs are infiltrating our school system, and we are told the drug pushers are the students. We will now need more school security, before guns infiltrate our schools.
Most young people who are involved in crime have a desire to ‘’get rich quick,’’ and many of them are very educated but they don’t want to work or seek a job, they have decided to keep the wrong company, thus their being pushed into a life of crime by peer pressure — to get easy money to wear brand name clothes, drive expensive cars, and wear millions in jewellery.
In poor economies like Guyana’s, where unemployment is on the increase, closing down of the sugar industry is another broad road to crime. Young people are frustrated because they have no jobs to gain even if they are qualified from university, and most seek to migrate on the ten-year visa, never to return.
I read in the papers that we will get US$1 million a day from 2020 as remuneration for oil and gas. Those are words from President Granger. He did not say for how many years we will get the one million US dollars a day, but that is a lot of money. Professor Clive Thomas wanted to give one million Guyana dollars to every family here, which is not a lot of money here.
We will not be extracting oil for the next 23 years in Guyana, so it will be wise if this administration and the incoming administrations have a strategic economic plan to invest this money by opening up more job opportunities for our Guyanese people; by creating more industries, and not more ‘’debts’’. This money can also be used to modernise the sugar industries, so that workers can get more jobs. If we can invest wisely in modern technology and create more payable jobs, also raise teachers’ pay to three hundred thousand dollars per month, we will have more Guyanese coming back to live here than the massive migration we have seen for the past fifty years.
A close look at our markets and in Georgetown tells me clearly that we have more sellers than buyers, so if everybody wants to be a businessman or woman, then who will buy? This administration need to invest in our security system, pay the police and soldiers better wages and salaries, so they won’t take bribe, but work for their money. We have to stamp out this drug trade before it gets out of control.
Too many guns are on the streets. Too many young men are getting easy access to guns, to just walk into businesses in broad daylight and rob people; and they can outgun the Police, so they are not caught.
Life is about hard work; that is what God requires of us.
Regards,
Rev Gideon Cecil
