Education and Employment as a Solution to Gang Violence

John Briceño

From a broader perspective, PM Briceño says his administration is working on keeping children in school and creating job opportunities as an approach to addressing gang violence.

Prime Minister John Briceño

“But it is more than that. We need to be able to reach out to that community, especially the young children. My appeal is to those children. When the minister of education told me, and he probably said it yesterday, that in Southside Belize City we have a high dropout rates of kids not going back to school. Once we settle down and open up, we need to go visit these kids and find and do what we need to do to get them back to school. We need to ensure that they get their books and their uniform, even if we as a government has to pay it is good investment. Because, if not, if we don’t think about that, in the years to come we are going to regret it, because, they are going to be going into a life of crime.”

Paul Lopez

“A lot of them talk about job opportunities as well. What is being done to create job opportunities?”

Prime Minister John Briceño

“Look at what we have been doing; we are getting the economy to grow back again. The economy grew over twenty percent. We are still not where we want to be but we have to do it right now. Once there are jobs, people will get a job. But at the same time our young people have to be tooled. They have to have the proper tools to be able to work. That is why they need to be able to stay in school. We need to look at the ITVETS and retool them, so that those that don’t want to go to university can go to ITVET and become a plumber, or an electrician, or a builder, do lee bit of agriculture.”