Youth, Sports and Housing Minister Neville Wisdom is concerned that the nation’s youth is following a troubling trend and warns that if they are not surrounded or nurtured by a positive environment, it can produce a dismal effect.
Wisdom, who was in Grand Bahama on Monday to officially open the Sun Set Subdivision, revealed that 37 of the country’s young men are before or have been before the courts for murder and thousands are in trouble because of their approach to conflict resolution.
“I don’t like you so I shoot you. You look at me funny so I just stab you. You talk to my girlfriend and that means that you saying I don’t like that, so I chap you,” he said, illustrating the way youths think today.
It was discovered that to date, 55 per cent of the nation’s youth do not attend church, the youth minister disclosed at the official opening of the newest and largest subdivision.
Minister Wisdom said things were a little different when he was growing up.
“You went to church in the morning, Sunday school was three o’clock. You remember. But now, the only time they see church is for someone’s funeral or wedding,” he said.
“We’re reaping the benefits of those unwise decisions.”
Wisdom stressed that if the trend continues, 75 percent of the youth residing in Sun Set will not be involved in any organization that can assist in their positive development such as Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, Red Cross, Junior Achievement.
“The only thing that they will be exposed to help them perform some of the nonsense that seems to engage their thinking is that rubbish that they see on television,” he assured.
“Young men with their pants down to their hip and can’t tell you why. Younger women with all this beautiful skin colour and beautiful hair texture that God has graced them with and yet (they’re wearing) spandex and red wig and blonde wig.”
Singing the praises of one of the more successful youth-oriented initiatives, Wisdom spoke of the Governor-General Youth Award Programme.
Of the thousands that passed through the programme, statistics reveal that to date, no young man or woman has found themselves before a magistrate under a charge outside a simple traffic ticket.
“Young people who are involved in youth programmes, in sporting programmes and cultural activities ﾖ positive programmes in our county ﾖ very rarely get themselves into problems.
That, the youth minister insists, is an inescapable fact.
Wisdom warned parents that if they fail to invest their time in their children and their community, the inevitable is that in a very short period of time they will be living in a slum with challenged young men and women.
By LEDEDRA MARCHE, Senior Freeport News Reporter
