CHILDREN, DEAD and alive, have made news in recent weeks in ways both gruesome and gratifying. The negatives are obviously the more disturbing, in particular because gross inefficiencies of public and private administration are involved.
We refer to the reports last week of the bodies of infants piled up in a funeral home to which they were dispatched from hospitals in Lionel Town, Chapelton, Spaldings, and Mandeville. Disclosure of this gruesome pile-up is sequel to the controversy over a dead infant incorrectly identified as belonging to a Clarendon couple.
While the handling of dead bodies may lack the tender care involved in dealing with live infants, the sensitivity of parents may persist even in bereavement; although the report that some 89 bodies have been left in a funeral home unclaimed by relatives challenges this view.
Our concern shifts to the reports about children who have grown to be caught up in the hazards of human trafficking. So much so that the United States Department of State has listed Jamaica among countries facilitating internal trafficking of minors for sexual exploitation.
These minors, as young as 10 years old, are said to be employed in go-go clubs and used as prostitutes. The State Department warns that failure to legislate against these transgressions runs the risk of sanctions.
Neglect and abuse of minors in Jamaica is most obvious in the persistent presence of street boys struggling to eke out a living at traffic lights in Kingston. Exploitation of minors for commercial sex is not as obvious, even though the State Department report says the Government has full knowledge of it.
Prostitution as "the oldest profession" may be tolerated as a fact of life, or even as a facet of adult entertainment; but it cannot be countenanced when minors are involved. Indeed such minors may come from dysfunctional family structures which produce fatherless children and other social problems.
The Government, who appointed an Ambassador for Children some years ago, must move swiftly to stop the abuse of the nation's children. The society must demand this. Surely stopping the abuse of children must be more important than granting municipality status to Portmore! As a nation, we must push for the passage of legislation that will give greater protection to our children.
All of this abuse highlighted by the US report is in great contrast to the recent impact of 14-year-old Trudy McCleary's great showing at the Scripps Howard spelling competition in Washington D.C. That gratifying episode points to the kind of potential we all must nurture in children as the future of the nation.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
