Provide leadership for uniformed youth groups, says Khan

WESTERN BUREAU:

LIEUTENANT COLONEL Oral Khan, chairman of the Uniformed Youth Groups Secretariat, is urging Jamaicans to show more support for the nation’s uniformed youth groups by joining these service organisations in positions of leadership, which he says will be greatly needed.

Khan, who is also the executive director of the Crime Monitoring and Oversight Committee, made the call on Wednesday while addressing the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (MBCCI) inaugural security summit at the Montego Bay Convention Centre in Rose Hall, St James. The summit was held under the theme ‘Collective Security – Unity in Action’.

“The Ministry of Education recognises the importance of the uniformed youth groups and the co-curricular activities which are offered by these groups and is now mandating youth groups to expand in our schools, our churches, and our communities. The aim is to double the number of participants in uniformed youth groups within the next three years, but one main limitation on our ability to achieve that is the volunteer corps to lead these organisations,” Khan told the summit.

“We are going to need a cadre of responsible adults to offer themselves as leaders for these groups, whether it is going to be with the cadet force, St John Ambulance, the Scout Association, or the Boys’ or Girls’ Brigade. We are going to need persons who can commit a couple of hours each week to help lead these organisations because whether you go into the school, the church, or the community, leadership is what is lacking now,” Khan added.

According to Khan, himself a former cadet, the uniformed youth groups and other youth-focused entities serve as a viable option to draw young people away from criminal influences.

“There are the uniformed youth groups, and then there are youth clubs which are community-based. We have service clubs which are linked to international service organisations, and then, of course, you have the gangs, which have a certain appeal to some youths, and that is the one we want to direct our youths away from,” Khan explained.

“All the youth organisations offer something to our young people, a sense of identity and purpose, and they connect youngsters with a band of brothers or sisters of like-mind,” Khan added. “Some persons have questioned what has happened to all the uniformed groups because they used to see them more when they were youngsters. They (organisations) are still alive and well, but a number of them are struggling because of a lack of leaders.”

Khan’s recommendation reflects a similar call by psychiatrist Professor Fred Hickling, in 2018, for more uniformed groups to be instituted in schools as a way of tackling indiscipline among students and also to divert young people from a life of crime.

In recent months Jamaica has been grappling with several incidents of violence involving school students. These include the March 21 stabbing and subsequent death of William Knibb Memorial High School student Camal Hall in Trelawny, and the March 30 stabbing and injuring of a female student of Petersfield High School in Petersfield, Westmoreland.

Meanwhile, Assistant Comm­issioner of Police Clifford Chambers, the commanding officer for the Area One police division, warned the summit’s attendees that the current generation of young people will be lost if they are not quickly diverted from crime.

“We are looking at about 80 per cent of our murders in this space being committed by our youth, which is a big problem, and invariably they open themselves to being killed or to being arrested and charged. If we are not careful, we might lose those youth who we will depend on to carry out those things that we consider normal,” said Chambers.