The children are given wrong value systems

They cannot do that without the encouragement of their parents. Children cannot protest in front of a school for the removal of a teacher or because the gates are closed, the parents are the ones who authorise, agree and support the actions. When you look at the posters carried by the children, you are sure that the children did not write that language on those posters. The children are being used by their parents to send their messages.

Secondly, parents are advised about the dangers of carrying people in the trays of pickup vans, yet they convey their children in the trays of the vehicles. The police officers therefore confront the drivers and demand that they remove the passengers from the trays because they cannot allow the offence to continue. The parents address the police in a manner that demonstrates total disrespect for law and order yet the offenders become annoyed and report that the police do not know how to talk to people and their actions were inappropriate. All this opposition to law and order takes place in the presence and hearing of the children who judge the situation through the words and actions of their parents.

Thirdly, some parents sell illicit drugs in their homes, in the presence of their children and claim that they have to do that in order to survive and are even bold enough to say that they commit their acts because they need, ‘to make an honest dollar.’ Fourthly, if children were disrespectful to senior citizens, they are not scolded. But if somebody else’s child disrespected the same parents, they go to the police, report a breach of the law and demand police action in the matter.

Now the Junior Minister of National Security said that he was not impressed by talks of the truce in Laventille and its environs. He said that he would prefer the guns being handed over to the persons in authority. He recalled that history showed ‘the burying of the hatchet but the marking of the spot.’ Let’s be honest, the parents and the children in those areas know exactly what is happening and who the leaders of violence are, and they are watching and learning from the deceit of those leaders.

An Assistant Commissioner of Police indicated that, ‘wearing black clothes, switching on the headlights of your vehicles, marching in the streets and making all sorts of comments do not help. The answers lie in the communities.’

Parents, guardians and adults, you need to come clean and stop confusing the children with the wrong values. So when the country ends up in a state of bitterness - check the value systems.