Dear Editor,
I saw the news and read in the papers with a broken heart about a young female University of Guyana student who was attacked in the Rose Hall/Port Mourant area in the Corentyne.
As a former resident in Rose Hall I discovered recently that lots of hooligans are roaming the streets in that community, and even in the Port Mourant and Tain community.
These elements are the sons of broken homes; some of them come from decent families but followed the wrong type of company. Many parents have allowed their children to get away with wrongdoing because they never disciplined them in their homes. Then we have the single-parent lifestyle that has invaded our society like a sudden cancer. Many young as well as old people believe that they can just pick up a man or woman and start a family; then they soon realise that they are incompetent to raise a family. In my opinion, family life begins with a mature couple who are desirous of getting married legally in accordance with the laws of Guyana, and who are capable financially, morally and spiritually of raising a decent family.
In every corner in our society one can see young men smoking and selling dope, gambling, stealing and robbing. The drug trade has now become a get-rich-quick business for the very educated as well as the rogues in the streets. All around us rum bars, pool shops, gambling houses and prostitution dens are opening up. All around us on the pave in Georgetown as well as in the shops and affluent business places DVDs with some of the most obscene pornographic movies are on public display and can be purchased by anyone. Many top-class singers are singing songs of very seductive and vulgar content, and dancing almost nude in their music videos. When hooligan elements see all these sexually explicit images it motivates them to commit crimes of a sexual nature.
It’s about time we enforced the laws and had more police patrols in the Corentyne as well as vigilante groups. It’s about time our government ensured that hooligan elements in the streets were picked up, and these should include touts that rob innocent passengers at the bus parks. What I have seen in our country is too many idlers, rum bars, dope peddlers and the long dismal list goes on. In my travels I have seen more idlers roaming the streets of Guyana than anywhere else. In Suriname the police pick up rogue elements every day.
Yours faithfully,
Rev Gideon Cecil
