KINGSLEY THOMAS, managing director of the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ), has suggested that the failure of the island's education system is largely responsible for the spiralling crime problem that is threatening to overtake the country.
Mr. Thomas was the guest speaker at the annual installation and fund-raising banquet of the Rotary Club of St. Andrew held at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel New Kingston on Tuesday night.
"The weaknesses in education reverberates throughout the society leaving not just cracks and fissures," Mr. Thomas told the audience at a Rotary Club of St. Andrew meeting this week. "We now have gaping holes, not the least among which is the scourge of crime."
"The youths don't have a Plan B simply because they never had a Plan A. No Plan A, no Plan B, the result is plan C for crime," Mr. Thomas said. He described crime as the "single most crippling factor in our lives today." " It is the clamp that stifles the life blood of this country we call Jamaica," he argued passionately.
With regard to the migration of our teachers to foreign countries, Mr. Thomas reiterated his call for the importation of teachers from countries such as India to fill the gap that is left in the schools.
- J. M.
