Stop the slide

Bostic urges return to values, help for ex-convicts  By Shamar Blunt Former Minister of Health Lieutenant Colonel The Most Honourable Jeffrey Bostic is calling on Barbadians to get back to their virtuous and compassionate roots to stop the country’s moral slide. He also wants more done to help ex-convicts secure employment and stay away from a life of crime. Appearing on the political scene for the first time since he left office in late 2021, Bostic told a Barbados Labour Party (BLP) St Michael South Central Branch meeting on Sunday that a significant amount of the troubling behaviour among young people and in society, in general, can be linked, in part, to the decline in moral and religious values. “…Persons would have been exposed to some sort of religious education – whether it be through a church, a mosque, a synagogue, it did not matter. The point I am making is, at the end of the day, there was a moral compass within you. Even sometimes when we deviated from the path, generally speaking, we knew right from wrong. “There were other organisations that helped us, like the Cadets, Girl Guides, the Scouts and all of those things where discipline was important. Those things also helped to develop our character, develop our personality, and turned us into the young men and women that most of us ended up being, because of those organisations. Nowadays, young people are not joining those organisations…. These are parts of the reasons why we have been having some significant challenges when it comes to communities,” Bostic said. The former MP for The City quickly added, however, that young people alone cannot be blamed. “We tend to say young people because I know when we look at social media we see a lot of things that are disturbing, but I want to say to you that it is not a young people [issue]; it is a societal problem, adults included. “We all have a responsibility as adults to determine what we allow . . . our children . . . to be exposed to within the household [and] within the community as well,” he said. Bostic also expressed the view that more must be done to assist ex-convicts in getting gainful employment after they have served their sentences. He cautioned that if they are not given the opportunity to get jobs and support their families, some may be doomed to continue committing crimes. “We have to do everything possible to give persons the opportunity to demonstrate to society that they have learned from the experience and that they are ready to fit back into society. If we continue to rob persons of the chance to survive and to provide, then we all know what the result is going to be,” said the former senior officer of the Barbados Defence Force. During the meeting, Bostic also revealed that in his time away from the public eye he also started writing a book documenting his experience and that of Barbados in grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic. shamarblunt@barbadostoday.bb]]>