Opposition spokesperson on Education Ronald Thwaites recently called for mandatory military service for some young people who are not on the way to college.
Or in other words what he called “unattached youth”.
Ronnie Thwaites A Catholic Deacon, A lawyer, former radio Talk show host Parliamentarian and former Education Minister has a wealth of experience around the issues of youth and the problems they face.
It is all the more curious that Mister Thwaites never used his position in any of his several capacities to push the Administration of which he was a part for years to adopt his idea into law.
Said Thwaites:
“I believe our prime minister recently visited Israel, and they have a system like that because they are fearful of war and unrest,” Thwaites noted.
“Our state of crime and social unrest exceeds, statistically, the indices of a civil war, and for all of the other measures that we will take, led by the leaders of crime fighting in this country, they are likely to be more expensive, they are likely to be more punitive than necessary, if we only had a proper system of reorientation,” he stated.
Thwaites argued any such program should leave out weapons training.
The call came amidst a bill being shepherded through the house by Andrew Holness the Prime Minister which would create 700 spaces in the JDF for such youths.
As a political leader it behoove Mister Thwaites to read up on the benefits of military service, both mandatory and voluntary.
Several nations adopt and use mandatory military service to their advantage , not just for military reasons. certainly the Swiss are not fighting wars but they have used that model to their advantage.
I applaud the Prime Minister for this move , as well as former minister of national security Peter Bunting who support the bill while voicing concerns that the bill once it become law would effectively lower the age of recruits to the JDF from 18 to 17 years old.
Despite my support for this program I believe it does not go nearly far enough in addressing the problem of youth unemployment.
On March 19th last year I wrote an article titled” it may be time for mandatory service and arming the population”.
I argued then for mandatory military training for young people not going to college. I also made the case for arming the citizenry which I believe Government will be forced to look at eventually.
I said then that this could easily be done through legislation which puts in place serious background checks which includes psychological evaluation and mandatory continuous training while increasing significantly the penalties for gun crimes.
This by itself is not a silver bullet which will drive down crime, but it is one more thing which will seriously and positively impact this out of control crime situation in Jamaica which neither the Government nor the police seem to know how to handle.
Lets see if simple common sense approaches like these can catch on giving hope to young people while helping to reduce violent crime.
It May Be Time For Mandatory Military Service And Arming The Population.…