U W P STATEMENT
By Senator Ezekiel Bazil
January 05, 2011
I join in the total condemnation of what appears to be further increase in violence in the Wesley Constituency. It is indeed a sad day for us. We have had in record time, the stabbing of one young lady and the shooting of two young men while another juvenile is taken in custody in a neighbouring island accused of another serious crime. I appeal to the villagers to remain calm and focused as we go through these trying times.
To the families of the victims, I extend my deepest sympathy for the acts committed against you. May God give you strength and patience in these trying times?
To the churches we appeal to you to take a more active role in the lives of the youth. It is time to move from within the walls and reach out further. The young persons are yearning for your help.
Let me commend Magistrate Behansin for his efforts in putting together this peace conference. I express my fullest support for such a bold but necessary venture. I am available and willing to form part of this effort.
In the mean time as the parliamentary representative remains quiet, let me take the opportunity to inform the government on behalf of the youth and the rest of the villagers that they must now step in.
A greater presence of the police and customs must be felt in the area and justice must be swift.
The high rate of unemployment is not helping. The young people must be occupied. There are too many jobless young persons in the constituency and they are now joined by a new group who graduated from college and secondary schools in July 2010. What are they to do?
The people of Wesley were promised a Community Centre as a gift for voting in the government. One year has passed since, and not a block has been laid in the foundation. We will not rest until this centre is built and commissioned. The young people need a venue to release all their stored energy.
It is one thing to blame the young people but have we must stop for a moment and think of their frustration.
Some students had to discontinue college because government discontinued the transportation assistance which was offered to them for the last election. Who should they turn to?
The playing fields at all the schools are in the most deplorable state that one could imagine, yet the parliamentary representative remains mute. Does she have a voice in cabinet?
I called for a symposium on crime as of October 2010 and identified some interest groups to be targeted. To date we have had no response from the authorities. I again make this call. We must engage all in order to deal with this serious matter.
Farmers, both young and old, are challenged with the increased loss of production, no markets, mass deterioration of some farm roads and condemnation of some others. This continues to add to the frustration of the youth. I call on the government to please help in removing this state of frustration on our people.
We are known for contributing to national development and wish to continue. I Pledge my support for any attempt to reverse this situation and to return this beautiful area to what it used to be.
Senator Ezekiel Bazil
Statement By UWP Hon Senator Ezekiel Bazil
Over the last quarter century the ‘tough on crime’ movement, accompanied by neoliberalist individualism, has sought to “devolve” responsibility for crime prevention from state agencies to the community through programs like neighborhood watch, community policing, and community-based prevention programs in a process termed responsibilization.
Political leaders have increasingly relegated the responsibility for crime prevention to local community-based agencies while advocating a punitive “tough on crime” approach in order to maintain the appearance of power over criminals and offending behavior.
Most papers and evaluations (to date) on ‘crime prevention’ present results of ethnographic field work examining community-based youth-serving agencies. In order to elucidate the degree to which the strategies of prevention and punitive crime control coalesce politically and on the ground. Practitioners of community-based prevention agencies tailor their procedures to correspond to punitive strategies, but also resist these strategies, thus producing a complex and rich environment of control, correspondence, and resistance.
This ‘narrowminded’ approach has overlooked, hence negated, the importance of allowing individuals and communities to shape, implement, and manage their indirect crime control strategy of prevention actually creates opportunities for community-based practitioners to interject their own, sometimes countervailing, practices and philosophies of prevention.
At the end of the day, our community leaders, parents and respected elders of every Village/Community need to be actively and ‘directly involved (as the front runners) in any preventative measures if meaningful change is to take effect. The government should support any community based initiatives, and not dictate the criterion governing them, for solutions are individual to the individual communities.
We blame our governments for all the problems we face, yet we do not actively involve ourselves in the prevention process unique to our individual communities; why is that?
Just an opinion.
Christian Volney