Hear me out! - Create jobs, train more young people

I believe that in order to rescue our young men who are idling on the street corners, and who would otherwise graduate into gangs and commit crime, we need to make them employable.

Jamaica must be able to create more jobs and focus more on training our young people.

If people are engaged in gainful work, they will have no time to be plotting negative or evil schemes. And, obviously, if people have jobs, they wouldn't have time to be sitting on the roadside idling.

We can boost employment by building more factories and packaging houses and training our young people to fill that demand. In doing this, we could decrease the flow of imported goods, build more factories and packaging houses and train our young people to take up jobs in the new factories.

There are a lot of things that we can manufacture or grow here, but we are not doing it. This acceptance of business as usual must stop now if we want to save our young men from a life of crime, which affects us all.

Education is the key to achieving this goal of rescuing our young men. First, we need to cut out the shift system in schools, because kids cannot go to school for half a day and expect to do well educationally.

Recognise talents

Also, there are some people who cannot express themselves or excel in the formal platforms of education, but can demonstrate their knowledge and understanding otherwise. These persons would make excellent tradesmen and tradeswomen.

Therefore, we need to recognise their talents and channel them into job markets where they can make useful contributions to the society.

The Government and the private sector must invest in community infrastructure like playing fields, homework centres and mentorship programmes, and organise sporting activities like the Social Development Commission 20/20 cricket and football competitions as well as track meets, because they are a lot of Usain Bolts and Veronica Campbell-Browns in these communities just waiting to be exposed.

There are some young men who have fallen under the influence of the wrong role models - the pro-violence musicians, gangsters and so-called dons - who are giving the impression that education and hard work aren't important. We must take them to the prisons and the cemeteries to show them the flip side of crime.

We must also introduce them to the 'Butch' Stewarts, the Lee-Chins, and the Matalons who, through hard work, have built up themselves into productive citizens in the society.

But there are those who, no matter what we do to help them, no matter how we try with them, will always stick to a criminal lifestyle. For these young men who continue to challenge the authority of the State, the security forces will have to take them out of the society, because one bad apple always spoils the whole bunch.

Appleona Brown is a student in the Mocho greenhouse training programme. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.