Richard?Lord

Olympic gold medal­list and re­cip­i­ent of the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of T&T Keshorn Wal­cott is ad­vo­cat­ing the use of sport to help re­duce crime in T&T. Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards pre­sent­ed Wal­cott with the coun­try's high­est award at yes­ter­day's Na­tion­al Awards cer­e­mo­ny. Among those in the au­di­ence were Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Ja­maican prime min­is­ter Por­tia Simp­son-Miller, Guyana prime min­is­ter Sam Hinds and Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent Ralph Gon­salves. Oth­er re­cip­i­ents of the coun­try's high­est award were late prime min­is­ter George Cham­bers and late trade union leader Adri­an Co­la Rien­zi. Cham­bers' award was col­lect­ed by his daugh­ter An­drea Cham­bers, while Rien­zi's award was col­lect­ed by his son, Robert Abidh-Waugh.

The num­ber of awardees was high, 75 in to­tal, be­cause T&T is this year cel­e­brat­ing its gold­en ju­bilee. Af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny, Wal­cott spoke with re­porters say­ing he ded­i­cat­ed his lat­est medal to the peo­ple of T&T. He said he was sur­prised by the award when he was told he would be a re­cip­i­ent a cou­ple days ago. Asked what ad­vice he would give to deal with the crime prob­lem in T&T, Wal­cott said sport was an op­tion avail­able. "One of the bet­ter op­tions (avail­able) was to get in­to sports in­stead of turn­ing to crime," he said. But Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Joseph Har­ris, a re­cip­i­ent of the Cha­co­nia Medal (Gold) yes­ter­day, said crime can­not be solved by be­ing emo­tion­al. He said more long-term mea­sures must be im­ple­ment­ed to ad­dress the is­sue, in­clud­ing ed­u­ca­tion. Har­ris said he was re­ceiv­ing the award on be­half of the church and that he was sur­prised by the award. On the is­sue of crime, Har­ris said crime can­not be solved by "knee-jerk meth­ods." He said, "Ba­si­cal­ly we need to fix our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem...Our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem far too of­ten tells peo­ple that they are not worth any­thing." The ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem must build self-con­fi­dence among the stu­dents, he said.