Cordel Hyde Says Parents Must Step Up Now

Cordel Hyde

During his tour of municipalities for the recent municipal elections, Briceño spent much time in Belize City touring homes and speaking to residents. But his deputy, Cordel Hyde, has been a City resident all his life and presides over the division where a majority of this weekend’s killings took place. Hyde told us that some measure of social interaction needs to be restored alongside the police’s mediation and intervention efforts, along with addressing economic problems.

Cordel Hyde, Deputy Leader, P.U.P.

“The truth of the matter is it’s about high time we get all the parents together – all the mothers, all the grandmothers, all the fathers who are around, the gang members and the prospective gang members – we need to get all those persons together and get them to interact with each other. A lot of problems can be averted if the mothers are interacting; lots of times these mothers are related to each other, it’s cousins killing cousins at times but there is no interaction, too many people just doing their own thing. I think if you have that level of interaction, you can get those parents to reinforce the mediation efforts; the mediation efforts alone will not be sustained over a long period of time. When the kids go home, that focus on peace has to be reinforced by the parents, by the grandparents, by the family. If the parents, if the mothers are interacting, some of the skirmishes that escalate to murders can be dealt with.  Once we get the mothers together, we’ll understand where the challenges are – we’ll understand who are the mothers who are not equipped to be mothers; who are the parents who are not equipped, and need parental support, need parental training and guidance. We’ll also find out who are the parents that need economic support to ensure that the kids can go to school and stay in school. We have every year two thousand kids dropping out of school, between primary and high schools. Something wrong with that picture. Where do these kids go? And they drop out because the vast majority of the time the parents can’t afford to send them to school. So once you get the parents together, you can start to understand the problem and target the resources to address these areas.”