By: Vigilante
I am sorry that someone like Kenrick Simmonds had to be shot for people to understand that a plaster, even if it is a $31,000,000.00 plaster, is still just a plaster. It is clear that peace cannot be guaranteed, as was boasted, regardless of how much money is spent, if the people who are being paid to keep the peace only know one way to resolve their beefs. Something else needs to be done. Mindsets have to be changed. We can’t be spending this truck load of money and not have safe streets.
More and better guns are now on the streets. So it begs the question — why is there the need for any illegal firearm if peace is on? For a $31,000,000.00 peace programme in a tiny island like ours, there ought not to be one single illegal firearm in the federation. There ought not to be one single gun-related incident in the country. On the very rare occasion when a shooting does occur, the shooter, the gun and the matching bullets should be in custody within seventy-two hours. But this is not happening. And those of us on the outside have to ask ourselves why.
Also not good is the unnecessary stress being created by the NEOC bubble. Only St. Kitts has a bubble. No other Caribbean country that is trying to welcome back tourists has a bubble. The people in NEOC have received their full pay, perhaps more, for the entirety of this pandemic. In fact, while members of NEOC have been able to travel abroad on vacation, taxi drivers and operators have lost their vehicles and some of them have not worked since March 2020. The furthest thought on a taxi driver’s mind is the next vacation.
All NEOC is concerned about is bragging rights. There are no bragging rights with COVID. Every country in the world has had COVID. Every country in the world has had people dying of COVID. But every country in the world has recognized that we have to live. The taxi drivers and operators are not happy. The tourists are not happy. Perhaps when there are enough unhappy tourists posting videos, NEOC will wake up. In the meantime, we wait.