Nagra Plunkett, Assignment Coordinator

Pastor Glen Samuels, president of the West Jamaica Conference of Seventh-day Adventist Churches. - Photo by Nigel Coke

WESTERN BUREAU:

A call for mandatory military training for young persons, particularly males, was issued on the weekend as an initiative to stem the nation's worrying crime problem.

The call to Government came from the president of the West Jamaica Conference of Seventh-day Adventist Churches, Pastor Glen Samuels, at a thanksgiving service in Montego Bay to mark the recovery of an Adventist pastor from an attack by gunmen last May.

Pastor Samuels said the idea "may have resistance, yes, but who can discount the fact that we are growing an indisciplined society ...?

"I ask the Government to consider a programme similar to that of countries where it is mandatory, particularly for young men to spend at least one year in the army."

Teach them a skill

According to Pastor Samuels, the year should address discipline and skills training.

"Proper processing of those who are so drafted would at least allow the system to teach them a skill, with which they can live later on, and they will emerge from the system more disciplined youngsters to impact those in their neighbour-hood," he proposed.

The clergyman was giving the charge at a 'Service in Praise and Thanksgiving for God's Miraculous Delivery of Pastor Egnal Grant', who was shot and injured by two gunmen in Irwin, St. James, on May 10. The service was hosted at the West Jamaica Conference Centre in Montego Bay on Saturday afternoon.

Pastor Samuels' proposal comes almost 10 months after businessman Mark Kerr-Jarrett, chairman of the St. James Parish Development Committee, told a Gleaner Editors' Forum in Montego Bay that the Jamaican Constitution should be reformed to make it mandatory for every person age 18-25 to be drafted into the military.

Merger

He said he believed in the merger of the National Youth Service and the Jamaica Defence Force, making them an army corps of engineers.

"Use them to replace and, if not, seriously augment the National Works Agency. Make it mandatory that all men and women age 18-25, who are not employed or in tertiary education, to give two to three years service in the military," Mr. Kerr-Jarrett had said.

"In this way we will be able to deal with hopeless youths and re-socialise them in a mandatory, disciplined and structured way."

Last week The Gleaner reported that an alarming trend has been developing among the youth as,

over just eight days, teenagers were implicated in at least four violence-related incidents including murder, a stabbing and illegal possession of a firearm.

On Saturday Pastor Samuels also used the occasion to call on the Church to increase its volunteerism in social services for the youth.

"This nation must now consider the value of social workers, even on a part-time basis because it is reaping the fruit of a breakdown of the Jamaican home life. Many of our youngsters who now source violent weapons are coming from homes where they were never properly socialised."

A special offering was also collected, during the function, towards the Grant's Thanksgiving Fund - aimed at uplifting inner-city youths.

"While I forgive the men (my attackers), I would like to baptize them," Pastor Grant shared with the congregation. "Thank you for all the support you've given to me during my ordeal; thanks for the prayers, many visits, telephone calls and cards."

nagra.plunkett@gleanerjm.com