Guyana needs to capture its children

Jun 20, 2008 Features / Columnists

The Ministry of Human Services and Social Security has for some time now been conducting a programme to protect children and there has been some measure of success.

In this society in which the family is very important, the country is beginning to see signs of disintegration. Children are now being seen roaming and even sleeping on the streets.

Where it could, the government has been taking these children off the streets and placing them in homes designed for such purposes. However, there are not enough of such homes to cater for all the children whom the society has noticed have either run away or simply put on the streets by their parents.

This is being done at great cost because the government recognizes that the future of any country rests with its young people.

The action by the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security has been doing this for some time and more recently it has expanded this programme at great cost. Yet there are simply not enough homes to allow for this government to cater for all the children who have been abandoned.

Some members of civil societies have established orphanages and these are catering for even more children and recognizing the contribution that they are making to the society, the government helps fund the operations of these orphanages.

The money has to come from somewhere and while those who are always criticising the government may not want to admit this, the money has to come from taxes levied on so many operations, including goods imported into the country.

However, there is one shortcoming and it involves those children who live outside the capital. While this may not be common knowledge, many of the children actually come from the rural areas, having run away from home.

None can deny that these children whom the government manages to rescue from the streets often do well and end up making a valuable contribution to the society.

But those who are not captured often end up being the worst nightmare for the society. Recently the nation found that some of these are the gunmen who have been wreaking havoc.

They have been the killers who attacked Lusignan, Bartica and some other sections of the society. This might have not been known but the security services, in pursuit of some gunmen holed up in the interior, managed to smoke them out and kill a few.

To the surprise of the nation, many of the gunmen were younger than seventeen years old and one is now left to wonder at the numbers who may still be carrying guns to the detriment of the country.

This discovery makes all too important, the move by the Ministry of Human and Social Services to target single-parent households. This is also being done at a great cost, but no cost could be too great when the nation is under threat.

The record shows that most of the single parents are women, leaving the nation to wonder whether there are any men around.

The schools are populated by female teachers; the offices are staffed overwhelmingly by women and now this is the case of the homes.

But the absence of the men seems to be the reason for the young killers which one newspaper described as members of a child army.

This, it has been believed, came about because the young men are growing up without fathers and in so growing up they venture out on a constant search for a father figure.
Sometimes they encounter the wrong father figure and this could be detrimental to all concerned.

Because of what is being discovered now, the government is going to step up its monitoring of those men who abandon their children and visit them with serious consequences.
No individual should expect others to shoulder his responsibility.

There is a law that dictates that those men who do not support their children be made to do so through the courts yet many women find the process so tedious that they often do not even pursue the men.

The government is going to do something about this and it is here that the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security may be asked to play an even greater role in the life of children.

The critics will soon argue that children are being killed but they are now being invited to help rescue these very children instead of standing idly by and convincing themselves that the children are not theirs and are therefore not their responsibility.

The young gunmen have proven that every child is the responsibility of every Guyanese.