Are we honest with ourselves in assessing the situation of crime in St Vincent and the Grenadines? (Senator Julian Francis).
Senator Julian Francis said some of the politicians on the Opposition benches are blaming the government and unemployment.
“They say the government is not creating, and if they ain’t creating jobs, what they want the young people to do”.
Francis said that has to be some thinking because there are many young women unemployed but not shooting each other.
“Many young women have children, unemployed, but yet able to feed themselves and send their children to school, without shooting one another”.
“The Opposition, you would remember what they had running the other day on the Hospital, they ran their time with that, they thought they were getting momentum then it fell flat on them”.
Francis said it is a continuous search by the Opposition to blame the government, an ongoing search for which they fail every single time.
“The government position on this is that we prepare and present the security of the nation, this is to say we invest in the Police Force, we invest in the Coast Guard, we invest in the equipment and vehicle for them to mobilise”.
Francis pointed out that the government had invested significant sums in the mobile units more so in the last five years,
He said there is an element in SVG within the young men, and that’s where the heart of this problem is.
Turning his attention to dancehall music, Francis said, when he was a young man, they had what you call a censor board for movies, no film could have been shown unless I went through censorship.
“ Are we getting to the point where we now need to censor the lyrics of the songs we play here”.