Dear Editor,
The Prime Minister visited Linden yesterday and was told about the violent gangs. He was told that the police may be aware of the existence of gangs in that community. What will his government do about it? There is massive unemployment at Linden under his regime. Poverty is rife in that town because the PPP has a history of stifling it.
Will his government save those young boys from themselves and help them to be gainfully employed? Will his government identify youths in those gangs and help them to find a trade? These children have become what they are because the system has neglected them. The government continues to neglect Linden, therefore the social malady has become more profound. The economy of Linden is dead while these youths have to live. No one cares so they turn to each other in gangs to find their own identity. The law is lawless therefore these youths thrive.
We must not shoot them and jail them. We must examine how we have failed them. The lawlessness at national levels embolden our youths to be the purveyors of same. The problems our youths are faced with are not really theirs. These are societal problems existent even before their time. Every time the PPP is in power we see the rabid signs of social decay and economic stagnation. Under the PPP violence increases and brutality escalates.
The children in those gangs, I would like to think, are the children and grandchildren of people I have grown up with in that town. I will not condemn them. In the abundance of the oil wealth that is not trickling down to communities such as Linden, children have to turn to selling drugs to survive and to violence to find a way out of destitution.
Sincerely,
Norman Browne
Social and Political Activist
