During the recently concluded Women’s Conference in Palau, one of the issues that were tackled was the alarming rise of kids who are skipping classes, drinking and stealing, don’t have a place to stay, smoking cigarettes and marijuana.
“We find them, we bring them to the police station, then we call their parents,” said Elizabeth Oseked, Juvenile System Youth Development Specialist.
Osekid said the kids would normally hang around the track and field, at friends’ house or around business establishments. She added that those students who come from Babeldaob would just wear their school uniform just so they can ride the school bus to Koror. “And once they’re in Koror they change uniform and skip class, play around. At the end of the day, they put on their uniforms so they can ride the bus home.”
According to Detective Margaret Martin, the kids have all sorts of excuses for cutting classes. “They just want to play around, and when they get caught they say they don’t have school uniform, they don’t have this and that.”
Martin would pick them up, call the school first so when she talks to the parents she already knows how long the kids have been skipping classes. “If they’re failing, if they have chances to go back to school and if they can afford make up classes… these are the things that we talk to parents about.”
The problem according to Martin is that parents don’t seem to care.
“It’s basically something to do with the situation at home,” she said.
“We need to work and help each other out in order to help these kids.”
Martin added that the number of kids dropping out of school is just too high for Palau’s population. “We’re in denial that we have these problems,” she said.
According to them, parental supervision is lagging. There are no parents around to supervise the children. The grandmothers who are raising the children are too old. Alcohol and cigarettes are easily accessible even at home.
“Every payday some parents spend their paychecks on alcohol and tobacco, so kids don’t even have lunch money,” added Oseked. “But a lot of these kids also come from well-off families, whose parents give them money, sometimes too much money.”
Osekid said that after the women’s conference they started getting calls from parents whose kids have been away from home for months on end because they didn’t know that they can be charged for neglecting their kids.
Although at present, Martin said there are no such cases filed yet, they are thinking that it’s about time the Justice Department started filing charges to neglectful parents again.
“At the Attorney General’s office, the attorney I worked with did not want to charge the parents,” said Martin. “I need someone on board who can help me do this. I used to work with people, two administrations ago, and we charged parents for neglecting their kids.”
Osekid said they’re basically there to protect the rights of children.
“We try to help them first before we charge someone,” she said. “Their focus is to help kids go back to school, have a good life, guide them, prevent them from getting into more troubles.”
Parents should raise their kids accordingly, sadi Oseked. Family planning should be the number one priority of couples. “If you don’t have a job, a house, then don’t get married and have kids.”
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