The WPA says the disappearance of three young Guyanese boxers at the JFK airport in the USA “underscores the depth of the crisis affecting the lives of disadvantaged young Guyanese in the country of their birth.”
In a press release the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) said the PPP and government must be reminded that during the last years of the PNC-led government, the political opposition had referred to young people in the country as an endangered species and pledged to do whatever was necessary to turn around their lives. “1992 has come and gone” and the PPP has been in government now over 18 years; Guyana has witnessed the unprecedented actions of children and youths, some 16 years and younger, most of whom were born during this administration’s government “bearing arms in a non civil war situation.”
The party contends that “Any caring government would have made it their duty to try and to understand the reasons for this phenomenon and would have taken steps to address it, the group said.
The end result of government’s failure to develop and implement meaningful programmes to advance all of Guyana’s young people and particularly the most disadvantaged, is seen in the existence of a generation of young people who are today frustrated and who “believe that salvation lies in putting distance between Guyana and themselves.”
The WPA said faced with a life of peril and untold suffering, rising drug use, hopelessness, escalating criminality, injustice, torture and unrestrained killing, no one except those who benefit directly from the havoc in the society, will have an interest in staying around.
According to reports, the boxers had been booked on the final leg of their return flight to Guyana on their way back from participating in the recently held Commonwealth Games in India.
