The Head of Criminal Records Unit of the Wa Central Prisons, ASP Alhassan Majeed has said social vices have a dire impact on the confidence of young people to take part in meetings and decision-making processes within their communities.
He said young people develop low self-esteem and a sense of inferiority complex due to stigma, finger-pointing, and social excommunication as a result of their involvement in social vices.
ASP Majeed said this during a radio discussion on "Ti Beo Jine," a programme produced by Curious Minds Ghana in collaboration with Info Radio under the STAR-Ghana Foundation-funded Youth for Governance Project being implemented in the Kperisi community in the Wa Municipality.
He noted that young people, particularly those into drug abuse and alcoholism, under the influence of those substances, mostly do not even turn up for family meetings and on rare occasions when they do, they are not taken seriously.
“You’re abusing drugs, there is a family meeting or communal meeting, and the first thing is that you will not even agree and come. Most of them don’t even go to those places because of stigma, because of the feeling of inferiority.
“The second thing too is that even if they agree and come, they will even be chased away because they will tell you ‘these are serious people,’ so get away. The thirdly, you will come, they will agree but whatever you saying, they won’t even take it because they think that what you are saying is of no use,” he observed.
He indicated that the youth are unable to contribute to decision-making because they perpetuate social vices and not necessarily because they are empty up in their heads and therefore, queried, “If somebody will be keeping your knowledge to yourself, how will society develop?”
ASP Majeed lamented the negative impact of social media on the lives of young people who are learning wrongly from the virtual community.
“As for social media, sometimes, you don’t know whether it has come to worsen our problems or it has come to ameliorate the problems we are facing, but when you look at it largely, a lot of our values being reduced, is from social media,” he said.
He said the lifestyles and dressing patterns of young people are being influenced by what they see on social media as he noted that they imitate friends whom they do not even know in person.
ASP Majeed also noted with concern how children roam about the streets of Wa at very odd times of the night, indulging in vices such as promiscuity and substance usage.
“It is very disheartening when you see small, small children, around eleven, twelve [o’clock] midnight roaming within the principal streets of Wa [and] nobody cares. Doing what? They are doing boyfriend-girlfriend things,” he lamented.
He called on the public to take an interest in the affairs of children, warning that if the children were allowed to go wayward and irresponsible, they would come back to haunt the larger society.
Some callers blamed the poor nurturing of children and the rising spate of irresponsible acts among young people on what they described as the legalities surrounding rights and limits to which parents can correct their children.
However, ASP Majeed noted that there was no law barring parents from “disciplining” and nurturing their children to grow into responsible adulthood.
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