A story in last Tuesday's STAR once again highlighted the effects of criminality on the average Jamaican.

The story was about the jerk vendors on Red Hills Road being told by gunmen to leave the streets by 10 p.m. because of tensions between men from 100 Lane and Park Lane who are on the brink of war.

The impact is highlighted further in the story when a vendor said his livelihood was at stake because his customers usually came at 11 p.m., an hour after the stipulated lock-off time.

It is full time that people in these communities be resocialised to understand that violence is not the only answer. Maybe they believe this because it is only when there is a flare-up in their community that authorities come and try to do something.

For some of these residents, it is when there is violence in their communities that any real attempt is made to give them jobs or uplift their lives.

But the Government needs to be more proactive than that. We cannot keep flooding these communities with police only when there is a flare-up. There are real concerns fuelling the violence and these need to be addressed in a structured and timely manner.

A plan of action about how to address these issues should come from the Government and should aim to deal with the real causes of the violence in these communities.

We need to stop putting bandages on the problem and do the surgery to address the cause of the wound.