The greatest dangers facing the women of Barbados today are "the twin-evils of North America electronic ghetto media and the bashment revels from our sister Caribbean member-state".
This is the view of Parliamentary Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office, Senator Irene Sandiford-Garner, which she expressed last Saturday, while addressing the Annual General Meeting of the National Organisation of Women (NOW). The meeting was held at the Bagnall Point Gallery, Pelican Village. ??????????????????
"Without strong and swift action by some Barbadian mothers on a daily basis, an entire generation of our ???men and women of the future’ would become the ???prodigal sons and daughters’ wasting their lives through hallucinogenic substances, while others stand by only too ready to rush in and occupy the vacuum which our youth are rapidly creating by refusing to attend school or to pursue gainful legal employment," she noted.
Senator Sandiford-Garner warned that the gains made before and since independence were being eroded by children becoming enslaved to a "low-life" culture. She stressed: "I plead with you as parents and guardians of today’s youth not to let your investment in their future be undermined and destroyed by the evils of the foreign and alien ???ghetto’ sub-culture."
The Parliamentary Secretary reminded NOW’s members that it was women, such as themselves, who formed the bedrock of this society and collectively sustained the nation.
"It is you who insist that our children go to school and attend church regularly.?? It is you who juggle careers, and motherhood, run the household and carry that ???ball’ called ???Barbadian core values’. You cannot afford to drop that ball, ladies, or, in the words of Calypsonian Romeo, this ???gem’ called Barbados will be ???gone’," she advised.??
Senator Sandiford-Garner pointed out that Barbados could not be a mighty nation "if the termites of ill-discipline, mind-altering substances and mindless violence" were allowed to infiltrate the cherished edifice called the family.??
"We have to remain the strong foundation on which this nation of Barbados approaches the second decade of the 21st century.?? We must be the mentors for our youth, both male and female; we have to reassert the basic values in this island nation, and we cannot, must not, be diffident about taking charge of this society," she stated.
She therefore called on the members of NOW to "ensure that our women fulfil their destiny and bring Barbados back to the straight and narrow!"