Prominent youth activist Roger Husbands says some of the members of violent gangs are among the island’s school population.He has therefore called on law enforcement officials and the Ministry of Education to ensure the bloodshed recently seen on the streets does not make its way into educational institutions when the new term begins in another two weeks.“One of my fears now is that school is about to start back and you have young gangsters and you have young guys who are actually running gangs who will be going back into the school system, and I want to encourage the Minister of Education from now to start to put plans in place for what might possibly happen,” the director of the Drug Education and Counselling Services (DECS) told Barbados TODAY.“We [have] got to ask ourselves who [is] doing the shooting, and the majority of [them] are young people who are under the age of 25 who are out there committing acts of murder. I believe that in the new school season that is coming that we are going to need more intervention, especially for our young men,” he added as he reacted to the announcement by police that the recent gun-related activity in the country has been occurring among members of known gangs.Husbands recalled that last year he warned that more children were joining gangs and that he had called on the relevant authorities to hold parents accountable for their actions.
