Dear Editor,
On a Walter Rodney Groundings programme which was aired on HBTV CH 9 on February 26, 2008, nearly four months ago, the undersigned on behalf of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) had first raised the spectre of the entry into criminal activity of a large number of young people who came of age under the PPP/C regime or who were born after 1992.
WPA had said then that any caring government would have been concerned about this phenomenon and would have moved to put in place the mechanisms to arrest this dangerous descent into hopelessness.
Reports from the Joint Security Forces operations to apprehend the ‘Fineman’ gang underscore the depth of this crisis. Children as young as 14 years are now being killed as they engage in what are reported as deadly fire-fights with the security forces. This is happening at a time when Guyana is not caught up in a civil war, yet the depth and human dimension of the problem seem to have escaped the attention of the government. There must be some reason or reasons other than neglect by some fathers and mothers, why so many of our most valuable resource have been driven into the kinds of activities which guarantee their demise at such tender ages.
At the other end of the spectrum we have the unrestrained, unfettered activities of the narco bosses aided and abetted by their fellow travellers in government, the business elite, and in the security forces. They are continuing to function and flourish in Guyana.
WPA shares the widespread concern in the society about the extent of the collaboration between the drug lords and high government and security officials, borne out by the revelations now being made in a US court of Roger Khan’s exploits in Guyana, including the killing of more than 200 Guyanese, and his own well-advertised assistance to the police in the cause of protecting the government against insurrection. WPA is today even more concerned about the extent to which ‘narco dollars’ have been used to further pervert the development of the most disadvantaged of our youth population.
In the final years of the PNC government, in its review of the lives of young people, WPA had referred to them as the endangered species of Guyana. We had arrived at this designation based on the neglect and the widespread frustrations that were very evident among this group. All of the political parties that were opposed to the PNC, including the PPP, had proclaimed that in a new dispensation this group would be targeted for high priority treatment.
Today, the results of the ‘high priority treatment’ can be seen. The entire nation is faced with a tragedy of immense proportion that extends across race. The present situation points to our collective failure to address the problems which have affected generations of young people and which will continue to haunt them for as long as we continue to bury our heads in the sand. For how long will we condemn generation after generation to despair and futurelessness?
If ever there was an issue that cries out for a national consensus, it is this destruction of the young among us, in particular the young men. WPA supports all calls for an urgent, dispassionate study of this tragic predicament. We also need to go well beyond that to ensure that we produce a blueprint for sustained action to retrieve the nation from this abyss, unlike the shelves and shelves of previous studies and reports gathering dust in government offices.
Yours faithfully,
Desmond Trotman
Chairman
WPA Executive Committee
