AT least seven children have died violently in the past week.
The latest is 15-year-old Jordano Flemming who was stabbed to death on Saturday night.
The Constabulary Communi-cation Network (CCN) reports that Jordano, a student of the Mona High School in St. Andrew, was walking along Bougainvillaea Drive in Mona, when he was ambushed by a man armed with a knife.
The man reportedly demanded the student's bag and when the request was not met, he stabbed the child.
Hours before that incident, 17-year-old Romane Brissett of Race Course, Westmoreland, was stabbed to death by a 12-year-old boy.
And last Thursday, six-year-old Levanna Gordon was shot dead while travelling in her father's motor car.
Her murder occured just days after Lloyd Marshall George McCool, three, Sean Chin, nine, Jesse O'Gilvie, nine and Jihad McCool, six, were also found dead in the St. Thomas massacre.
Speaking yesterday at a church service to commemorate Peace Day, which will be observed tomorrow, Dr. Donald Rhodd, Minister of State in the Ministry of Education, Youth and Culture, said these wanton acts of murder are intollerable.
"We need to break the back of the illegal drug trade," he told the congregation at the Family Church on the Rock, St. Andrew.
According to him the drug trade, is the biggest business today, According to him, the value of the global market at the retail level was estimated at US$322 billion in 2003.
This, he said, is higher than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 88 per cent of the countries in the world.
He noted that crime results in a reduction in production.
The Bank of Jamaica, he said, estimated that between 2000 and 2001, violent crimes resulted in the loss of three workdays per firm costing the country 0.6 per cent of its GDP.
Police statistics indicate that 105 children were killed last year.
In the meatime the childrens' lobby group Hear the Children's Cry has launched an initiative for all Parent-Teacher Associations and church boards to meet urgently to arrive at strategies for ensuring the welfare of children.
Convener of Hear The Children's Cry, Betty-Ann Blaine says the increasing incidence of violence against children is unaccepatble and demands urgent action from every parent and citizen.
- P.F.
