Showing care for street kids

THE EDITOR, Madam:

RECENTLY A window-washing juvenile made it his mission in life to terrorise me every time I stop at the Hagley Park Road traffic light in Half-Way-Tree. We first 'met' when he knocked loudly on the windscreen to get my attention a few weeks ago. I had waved my hand indicating that I did not want him to wash my windscreen. He took this to be some sort of an affront and stood back unleashing colourful expletives and foul verbs describing unnatural acts involving my mother!

Now, every time that I pass that way he comes up with a grim scowl, squirts water on the front windscreen and thumps all over the glass of the vehicle. I asked him what the matter was and he said (between vulgar curse words) that I refused to give him money! I am not unique in this regard as many others experience trepidation and foreboding as they approach some of the major traffic lights within the city. Many even go a long way to circumvent some intersections.

Although I should be angry I am not. The only emotion that I experience towards this youth (and others just like him) is pity because he is on a path that will lead to crime, pain for many in society and his early demise. There is a lesson here for all of us.

Recently the idiom 'pay now or pay later' has been foremost in my mind. There are certain inevitable things in life that must be dealt with, sooner or later. Our 'forgotten' youth will remind us of their presence sooner or later. We, as a society, will have to spend money on these individuals whether we want to or not, sooner or later. Other apt idioms come to mind. 'A stitch in time' and 'Penny wise and Pound foolish'.

We all know that things end up costing more the longer we wait to pay for them. Hire-purchase items cost more at the end of the contract. Mortgage and car loans end up costing multiples of the original cost in the long run. In like fashion, prisons cost more than schools. Pain, suffering and lost lives cost more than the early monitoring/educating of the 'forgotten' youths of society.

With all these recent prison and jail breaks, it is clear that we will have to spend millions to improve the security in our existing custodial institutions. I have heard talk of constructing more such institutions at costs soaring in the many millions. The 'cost' of crime in emotional stress, anxiety, and lost lives surely cannot be quantified or tabulated but I dare say that it is a 'cost' nonetheless and must be considered the most expensive of all.

It seems obvious to me that a well thinking society would see to the sapling rather than deal with fully grown trees rotten to the core with roots that grow deep into our very foundation threatening to destroy us from above and below. The children of the streets who roam around begging, washing windshields, or trading their very bodies are our responsibility.

Of course you or I did not conceive them nor did we bring them forth in poverty and misery but as a society we certainly must see to their proper upbringing. These are our children whether we believe it or not and if we ignore them now, we will pay dearly for it later.

Any and every child seen wandering the streets should be removed and their parent(s) summoned to explain their actions. Parents (especially fathers) must be made to understand that parenthood only begins with conception but never truly ends. Enforce the Child Labour Laws, enforce the Vagrancy Laws, and enforce the laws governing reckless endangerment of minors. We must provide places for educating these children and vocational learning institutions. We must take them off the streets.

As a society, we must see to the financial, physical and spiritual needs of these children while they are young. It will cost us far less if we build more schools and places of safety now than it will cost to build jails, prisons and coffins later.

I am, etc.,

GARTH A. RATTRAY

Kingston 10

Back to Letters