Senior Superintendent of Police Delroy Hewitt, in charge of St Andrew South division, shows The Gleaner paraphernalia taken from schoolchildren and vendors at school gates in the Duhaney Park police district in St Andrew. The Gaza and Gully buttons both depict violence. - Norman Grindley/Chief Photographer

THE GOVERNMENT is to begin a major clampdown on vending in the vicinity of schools, following further confirmation that some vendors have moved the ugly side of the dancehall into educational facilities.

The pending clampdown was announced yesterday by Andrew Holness, the minister of education, as he responded to news that the police found vendors at school gates selling chilling paraphernalia related to the increasingly violent feud involving supporters of dancehall artistes Vybz Kartel (Gaza) and Mavado (Gully).

News of the seizure of the cards with lyrics such as "mi murder people inna broad daylight" left Holness disturbed and alarmed.

"It clearly shows that we have to pay careful attention to what is being sold in and at our school gates," Holness told The Gleaner.

He said the Government intends to bring greater control to the issue of vending in the precincts of schools.

That position is supported by head of the St Andrew South police division, Senior Superintendent Delroy Hewitt, who argued that some of the vendors represent a threat to the children.

Police from Hewitt's division seized several buttons depicting the darker side of the Gaza-Gully feud at several Corporate Area schools yesterday.

These schools included a primary institution where the children are not yet 13 years old.

"Our intelligence suggests that there are a lot of those cards out there being sold to children," Hewitt told The Gleaner.

Superintendent Pauline Foster Turner, head of the St Catherine South police division, said members of her team would accompany the municipal police in Portmore on a drive aimed at getting undesirable vendors far from children.

"They are selling things to students at the school gates which we would rather not be sold to them," Foster Turner said.

She charged that illegal drugs are among the items being sold to the students by vendors.

In the meantime, Hewitt said the discovery of the violence-projecting buttons was another reminder of the crime problems facing the country.

He said any long-term strategy to tame the crime monster must include efforts to get entertainers to be more responsible with their lyrics.

"Music has done a lot for the country but there are aspects of our contemporary music that contain a lot of violence which is being inculcated into our children," Hewitt said yesterday.

The education minister is just as mindful of the damage being caused by some entertainers with what many persons have dubbed "murder music".

Holness said: "I am calling on the entertainers to try their best to set an example for the children and for them to dissociate themselves from violence. I also ask that they condemn the use of their image in this way."