How do we help them?

On my way home today, I decided to stop by Island Grill for some festivals. Before I came out the vehicle I observed that a young fellow who seemed to be selling stuff had moved closer to my door. "Oh Lawd," I thought to myself, "can I get a break from these sellers/beggars?"

"Miss yu can buy a socks from me?" Just as I expected.

"Don't need any socks." Even though I'm tired of them all, the beggars, the windshield wipers, the sellers, I try not to show the annoyance that I feel at not being able to move around without being accosted by one of them.

"Yu can buy me a soup when yu go inside please?"

As a rule I don't give money to anyone on the street. I keep thinking that I don't want to encourage a bad habit, they're young and strong, they're going to use money to buy drugs. However, I'm a sucker for someone indicating that he/she is hungry. So I went inside and bought him a proper meal (chicken sandwich, fries & pepsi and chided myself for not getting him some soup to settle the gas). While I was inside another beggar came up and ask that I put some money on the coins that he had in his hands so he could buy something to eat. So I had to dole out some more money.

I've been wondering these past weeks though, been turning it around in my head, what's the solution? How do we deal with all these sellers-cum-beggars-cum-windshield wipers?

I'm thinking that we need some unskilled work for them because of course they have no training or education. On the surface our construction industry (one obvious source of unskilled work) seem to be booming. You can't drive two minutes without seeing some new apartment building, office building going up. The problem is we don't hear people within the construction industry complaining of a dearth of unskilled labour.

Maybe we should set up some skills training centres so that they can learn a skill (plumbing, tailoring, etc) and create their own employment. The private sector should fund these as its in everyone's interest to have less unemployed young men with too much time on their hands.

Did I single-handedly solve one of Jamaica's problems? I doubt it.

I do wonder though if any serious thought is given by the power-brokers to how to solve that problem.