The Editor, Sir:

I was at the Portmore Mall on Saturday and happened upon a promotional roadshow put on by the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM) in the car park. It was promoting 'Hurricane Awareness Month'. One of the aspects of the show was dance contests.

For one such contest, several young adolescent girls went on stage to show their moves. I personally went to one participant to ask her age and she said 12. The person in charge of music selection started playing a new release from Beenie Man. I am not sure of the title, but all I can remember is the refrain, "Jack it up, fling it up gyal". Needless to say, the young girls showed their skills in dancing and the representative from the ODPEM was very pleased with the participation.

My question to the ODPEM is: "What kind of message were you sending to the audience and those young girls by that choice of music and what does hurricane awareness have to do with 'jacking up' and 'flinging up'?"

Sexually charged

We bemoan the fact that our young people are too sexually charged and loose in their behaviour, but at the same time, we ratify such behaviour with the playing of these songs and allowing such young girls to gyrate to the lyrics.

I do not have my head in the sand and I too am a citizen of culture, but no one can tell me that playing the song does not mean that one agrees with the lyrics.

While I am not saying that we must only play 'Jesus loves me this I know', we must be careful about the kinds of lyrics we use at promotions such as this because such use will mean an endorsement of the lyrics, and we must also be aware of the demography of the audience.

It would have been a totally different ball game if only consenting adults were on-stage or in attendance. Then the only question on my mind would be the correlation between the song and hurricane awareness.

I was really disappointed and I should hope that in the future, better discretion is used by the ODPEM because the unravelling of the moral fibre of our society is everyone's business.

I am, etc.,

NOLETA GOODEN

noletagooden@yahoo.com