And Hyde is encouraging Belizeans to speak up, especially the residents of Port Loyola, whom he supports.
And over in his own constituency, a spate in gun violence led to a month-long St Martin's state of emergency, which ended Tuesday.
And while Compol Chester loves it as a law enforcement tool, the acting PM - in whose constituency it happened - has expressed that he isn't a fan of these SOE's. Today he said that he's glad that it's over. He also added that the government is still working to keep the crime down in his area - but, stressed, that starts with access to education.
Cordel Hyde, Area Rep, Lake I
"Thank goodness it's come to an end, and as I've said before, this is not an overnight problem, this is problem that's been there for decades and we continue to do all we can daily to try to help to try to alleviate the issues, to try to address the issues really and to try to make sure that ultimately that is not the only choice you have other choices, that's what it's about, making sure you have other choices. But the truth of the matter is there are something people no matter what you do will go down that road but our job is to make sure to be there for the people who don't want to go down that road, who want to go down a different road. But at the end of the day, I'm a big proponent or trying to make sure that the young kids stay in school, trying to make sure that they don't fall out of school and become easy candidates, easy targets for gang membership and that kind of stuff. Every year for many many years over 1,500 kids drop out of school, that's each year, and lots of times they don't go back to school. And lots of times, these are kids that are in standard 5 and standard 6 and first form and second form, that's primarily where they fall out from, and why do they fall out of school? They fall out of school because of economic reasons and ultimately the job of this government, it's our firm priority that we have, we started with the free education campaign on the Southside of Belize City where we are making sure that kids will have everything they need to go to the four government high schools on the Southside so that there's no reason not to be at school. I'm a firm believer that once you go to school, once you complete school, you won't join any gangs and you won't get into any trouble and you won't get killed. So that's the challenge we have to make sure that these kids stay in school, work with the people who want to work with us to try and help them find employment, help them get retrained, or trained, give them an opportunity. The ones who don't want, well, we'll have to deal with that in a different way."
