It is sad indeed that finally we have to acquiesce to the growing consensus that if we want our children to be safe we have to protect them ourselves. Indeed, if we want to be spared the pain, the grief, the sense of loss and anguish and not to be pricked by a sense of regret whenever their smiling faces appear in our mind, and above all to avoid the public censure for having been careless, we have no choice in the matter.
It is most unfortunate that it has come down to this. We can be stubborn and insist that security is a right due to us and the state must provide it but in the end it is our children and we who are going to suffer.
In trying to accept the new reality maybe we can rationalise that circumstances
have changed – there are more people, there are more foreigners, more criminal elements and insufficient policemen – and so we have to take care of our own safety ourselves. The days when we used to walk or cycle long distances to and from school, in urban and rural areas, without having to fear for our safety are long gone.
Those were the days when primary school children walked, either singly or in small groups, without fear of being abducted or molested, sometimes frolicking merrily to and from schools. And the worst fear of parents then was their children forgetting or not heeding the constant reminders to look left and right before crossing a road and being knocked down by a passing car.
Many parents now suffer different nightmares after what happened to Nurin Jazlin and others before her. And if the present spate of children going missing continues, parents, who would do anything for the sake of their children, would have to make sacrifices.
One of them will have to stay home to look after the children. Thus, for many couples the threat to their children’s safety could mean giving up much of what they had been planning to do together or to have. It could very well lead to many establishments losing some of their best workers.
No doubt parents have to mind their children but must it come to this? The first time when almost every child in large cities was escorted to school was after the May 13 riot. School gates then used to be noisy places where the escorts – parents or grandparents or child minders – congregated before and after school.
Gradually and fortunately, however, as the situation returned to normal and confidence in the state security apparatuses increased many children were no longer escorted.
If we don’t do something, and quickly, our school gates will once again be where parents, grandparents and house maids congregate in large numbers. – The Sun
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