Community
Articles and/or Speeches

Plight of the Trouble TCI Youth
Graduation Address
The Impact of Crime in the TCI
Budget Presentation
Children's Care & Adoption Bill 2010
The Effects of Crime in the TCI
Summary of Offences Amendment Bill 2010
A Family Court
Introduction of Ms Delancy
Mother's Day Speech
The Role Of NGOs
Seventh Day Church
Turks and Caicos Employment Bill
Woman's Day

Madam Chair, Colleagues, Visitors and listening audience, Good afternoon. I rise to give support to my colleague’s presentation on the Plight of the troubled TCI Youth.

I know that the focus of this interim administration is on the political issues, but we must address the social issues at the same time. To ignore the latter, Madam Chair is just as dangerous.

Madam Chair, a juvenile is described as any person under the age of eighteen. In the Turks and Caicos we tend to only pay attention to delinquency when it hits home.  The majority of our troubled youngsters tend to be impressionable teenage boys. In the absence of recreational facilities and strong role models, there is no avenue for expressing themselves or channeling their youthful energies. The existing Youth Centre is doing good work, but that is one small voice in the wilderness. We need to engage a team of Psychologist and social workers who are experienced in working with children to assess and evaluate these young people.

A large part of the problem is that there is a breakdown in the home. The teenage pregnancy rate is the country is frightening, children are raising children. Single parents – usually the mother – struggle to put food on the table and clothes on the family. Often a child comes home from school with homework and there is no adult to supervise them or help with the home work. If the parent is at home they may themselves be poorly educated and too embarrassed to admit to their child that they cannot understand the homework.

We often hear that if a child lives with praise they learn to appreciate, and if a child lives with approval, they learn to like themselves. The opposite is also true. Children learn by example, and if the example that is being set is one of benign neglect and poor work habits, they will follow that path. Madam Chair, sometimes the attire of the parents leaves one to ask who is rearing who, since some mothers leave more exposed than their daughters. Some fathers think it’s cool to have both father and son having a beer and seeing who can drink who under the table or burp the loudest. Parents need to be parents and stop competing with their children. Parents need to understand that drinking and doing drugs in front of impressionable youngsters gives the impression that such behavior is okay. Imagine, a father and son both having cases in court, on the same day and for similar offences?

Madam Chair, the Gender Affairs Department has attempted to address parenting issues by holding seminars and work shops with parents and the public at large.  Parenting classes help to teach parents how to be better parents. These classes need to be started in the High Schools - maybe understanding the true role of a parent will help reduce the number of girls having babies ‘for’ their boyfriends and then discovering that in reality they now have a child who is dependent upon them for everything while the boyfriend is off partying and seeking the next conquest. Our young people must learn to respect themselves.

The underground brothels in the TCI must be closed down. Too many families are falling apart because of negative distraction. Too many marriages are ending in separation and divorce. Fathers are not living up to their responsibilities and as a result, many children are going to bed hungry, have no electricity, no running water and many are loosing the family home because the one parent salary cannot meet the family expenses. Fathers need to be fathers. Young girls need to know what to look for when choosing a partner or a friend. Young boys need their fathers to be their role models.

Many times we think the answer to controlling a trouble youth is to send them to a reform school. Because the thought process is that they are out of the way. Yes they are temporarily out of the way, but your problems really begin when they return.

In the TCI, there is no re-habilitation center to house juveniles; they were often put in the same holding cell as the mature criminal. Madam Chair, in that instance they learn quickly.  Some of them come out hating society, simply because most family members don’t visit or enquire about their love ones after they are incarcerated.

Madam Chair, the Turks and Caicos Islands need a Family Court. I have been agitating for a Family Court to be established in the TCI since March of 2005.  In the former administration’s manifesto, establishing a Family Court was one of the campaign pledges. It is disappointing that five years later, we are still twiddling our thumbs.

We must cater for our young people. How many of these children are given the opportunity to have part time jobs? Where are the apprenticeship programmes? Why is there is no technical school? Highly skilled tradesmen can earn a very good living and will always be in demand. We must do a better job of caring for our youth.

In closing Madam Chair, I wish to leave a few words from the late George Carlin called “ The Paradox of our Time”. In this he described these days as; two incomes, but more divided, of fancier houses but broken homes, taller buildings, but short tempers, wider freeways, but narrow view points. We spend more, but have less, we buy more but enjoy it less, we have bigger homes and smaller families, more convenience, but less time, we have more degrees, but less sense.  We have more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, but more problems, more medicine but less wellness. We have multiplied our possession but reduced our values. Values Madam Chair, are taught by parents.