The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

As the debates are being discussed about the legal age of consensual sex at age 16 or 18 with a young teenager there are some things to examine and consider that are impacting the social issues with families in the Bahamas. For too long young teenage girls 14,15,16 and 17 were having babies as a single parent. These teenage mothers were unable, unprepared and not ready to raise children because they still were not mature enough to have this knowledge. Adding more problems was the fact that they had to drop out of school and were unable to have a High School Diploma. This made it extremely hard, difficult and nearly impossible to raise their kids.

The dilemma from this is that 95% of gang members are from a single parent home. The foundation of a nation is a strong united family with a mother and father together raising their children. The first thing to address this problem is to make it a law that 18 years old is when a consensual sex relation can be with a woman, then the second thing is for the Bahamas Government to have the Ministry of Youth introduce Sports programmes - Basketball, Baseball and Football to keep teenagers from joining gangs.

Also implement Mentoring Telephone Hotline numbers for kids in Coordination with the Christian Council along with School Guidance Counselors to offer kids without fathers a positive role male model that can help him to stay away from joining gangs. I was happy that Prime Minister Philip Davis implemented my recommendation in the Letter to the Editor Crime Prevention and Prisoner Rehabilitation to disrupt gangs in the Bahamas by having a Police Task Force Gang unit to address the gangs’ problems facing the Bahamian people. Hoping for a better Bahamas, onward, forward and upward. One God, One Nation and One people.

PEDRO SMITH

Nassau,

April 11, 2022.