AS THIS COUNTRY winds down from its premier national season of Emancipation and Crop Over, some reports suggest that antisocial behaviour is raising its head in our society.
Just last Thursday we heard that the experimental cassava plots of the Ministry of Agriculture had been destroyed and some of the experimental plants had been stolen. The Deputy Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Dr Lennox Chandler, reported this incident. When his officers went into the plots to check on the plants they discovered this havoc right throughout the field.
To add salt to the wound, the plants are too young for harvesting so either praedial larceny or vandalism could be the catalyst for this terroristic act. We have to ask ourselves what motivates these miscreants to destroy a field of experimental cassava that is too young to be harvested.
Twisted logic that it is, one might be able to understand, though not excuse, praedial larceny if the plants were ready for harvesting, but they are not.
A great deal of public money has been lost and an important initiative set back because of the social disease of coveting another’s property which has gained a foothold among some of our citizens.
Food security is one of the constant aims of all serious societies. It may never be fully achieved but experiments of the kind so wantonly damaged are important and nationally beneficial efforts to maximise the output of the best variety of cassava. This will help us to partly feed ourselves, save valuable foreign exchange and assist householders in providing healthy alternatives for the family menu.
Unfortunately, this selfish attitude, in which there is blatant disregard for the sanctity of other people’s property, is not confined to agriculture. It is part and parcel of an attitude that is anti-social and in which public property is attacked and vandalised as a matter of course.
Little wonder that the motto on one of the concrete seats provided at bus shelters warned You Brek It Up, We Tek It Up. That message is clear, and for all its directness we feel that the young thugs who think to destroy these benches will get the message – that there will be no tolerance for the destruction of public property.
This society is changing and while we are on the cusp of celebrating yet another year of peaceful and ordered development, there are these disturbing signs of virulent anti-social activity which must cause the sensible among us to pause and reflect on what can be done to arrest this trend.
We do not think there is any need to panic, not even if some of the more notable instances of disturbing behaviour have been accompanied by the use of firearms. But there is a clear need to deal with these elements in the society whose actions are frowned upon by the vast majority of people who make up the strong backbone of this nation.
Whatever else may be done to bring these trends to an end, the perpetrators of these acts must get the message that they are engaging in destructive behaviour that does not, and will not, have the support of their fellow men and that the society will not tolerate these exhibitions of an anti-patriotic attitude.