THE EDITOR, Sir:

There is a crisis in Jamaica that has now reached the western end of the country and has engulfed the entire nation. The crisis is a lack of opportunities combined with the endless amounts of cocaine and the massive amounts of guns available because of greedy ruthless people who should know better.

In Westmoreland alone, there are groups of young people comprising of nine to 15 criminals, armed with high-powered guns marauding around the parish strategically robbing, raping and plundering and they use the canefields to get around and to escape. This is the main reason why the cane fields are being burnt down. The Government has no clue, the cane fields are planted too near to people's houses and the people see what is happening in their communities and are scared for their lives.

When I think things could not get any worse, within weeks I'm astonished. What are our leaders doing? I will agree that it's not the gun by itself that kills and half of the problem belongs to the people also, but it's the leaders that have helped to create this monster by not taking their responsibilities as caretakers seriously and have become complacent with their positions and their lifestyles, while the country has been allowed to descend into lawlessness.

What we really need is strong and bold leaders who are not looking for anything for themselves. We need to reprogramme the behaviour of our people which has been allowed to get out of check for too long because of the free-for-all, dog-eat-dog mentality that comes from the top. Leaders are supposed to be like parents of a household, they can't allow outside influences to turn their children into monsters and take over the house.

We must use the laws to reprogramme the bad behaviour. This alone will create massive amounts of revenue for the country. When people have to pay to learn from littering to reckless driving and all other types of social misconduct, people will learn fast. Education, health care and security must be priority.

Jamaica needs help, things have become so bad now. We need help from outside or from people who will not be partial, whether at home or from Canada or England or Cuba. We need at least 20,000 armed forces from outside to come in for three to six months to blanket the entire 14 parishes at one time and go through with a fine-tooth comb.

The majority of the people will welcome this if it is done from the top down and all caught with guns and drugs (hard drugs) are sentenced accordingly. What about undercover surveillance? What about posting pictures of known criminals? This is 2007, get with the times, it's not all about chat.

I am, etc.,

NAM SINGH

Namsingh7@hotmail.com

Westmoreland

Via Go-Jamaica