Richard Lord

Gov­ern­ment is be­ing warned to do "what­ev­er is nec­es­sary" to si­lence the guns in the hands of the crim­i­nal el­e­ment in Laven­tille. If those car­ry­ing the guns are al­lowed to run ram­pant, they could even­tu­al­ly train those guns on the cap­i­tal city it­self.

This was one of the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed Youth At Risk Com­mit­tee, which was chaired by Dr Sel­wyn Ryan, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of po­lit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' St Au­gus­tine cam­pus.

Oth­er mem­bers of the com­mit­tee were lec­tur­er in in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions, De­part­ment of Be­hav­iour­al Sci­ences Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad; pro­fes­sor of gen­der and cul­tur­al Stud­ies Pa­tri­cia Mo­hammed; for­mer dean of the arts and gen­er­al stud­ies at UWI Dr Mar­jorie Thor­pe; and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Lennox Bernard.

The re­port has al­so rec­om­mend­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of a na­tion­al ser­vice scheme "in the short­est pos­si­ble time." It said the ser­vice should con­sist of "com­pul­so­ry com­mu­ni­ty-based project/ser­vice learn­ing for sec­ondary school stu­dents (for a min­i­mum of 40 con­tact hours)."

The 436-page re­port, ti­tled: No Time to Quit: En­gag­ing Youth At Risk, was laid in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day. She said the re­port rec­om­mend­ed the use of sport to deal with the prob­lem of crime.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her Gov­ern­ment ful­ly en­dorsed rec­om­men­da­tions for an in­vest­ment in sport as a de­ter­rent to ju­ve­nile crime, and this was proven by the im­mense suc­cess of the Hoop for Life com­mu­ni­ty bas­ket­ball tour­na­ment for teams in de­pressed com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try.

Deal­ing with crime, the re­port said: "Greater Laven­tille has made a dis­tinc­tive con­tri­bu­tion to the na­tion­al cul­ture and must be re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed and helped to rise again."

The re­port al­so list­ed an­oth­er "com­pelling" rea­son to re­sus­ci­tate East Port-of-Spain, which the Ryan Com­mit­tee said it has to do with the "strate­gic lo­ca­tion" of the com­mu­ni­ty.

"Laven­tille, one is warned, is like the 'dag­ger' point­ed at the 'soft un­der­bel­ly' of the cap­i­tal city, and it would be ir­re­spon­si­ble and neg­li­gent for those re­spon­si­ble for strate­gic plan­ning to ig­nore the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Laven­tille could in time be the weak link in the ur­ban chain," the com­mit­tee wrote.

"One thus (there­fore) has to do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary to 'si­lence the guns' of Do­ra­ta Street, Laven­tille, Bev­er­ly Hills and John John amongst oth­ers," the re­port rec­om­mend­ed.

The re­port in­di­cat­ed that the young African males in ur­ban hot spots such as Laven­tille were more at risk of be­ing di­rect­ly caught in the crim­i­nal world of drugs, guns and dead­ly vi­o­lent crime if some­thing was not done im­me­di­ate­ly to stem the prob­lem.

Nev­er­the­less, ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment: "The prob­lem is that Laven­tille and its di­as­po­ra is now more a mat­ter of class than one of race."

It said the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter must al­so go af­ter the "big ones" who im­port­ed guns and il­lic­it drugs in­to Laven­tille.

And the re­port al­so rec­om­mend­ed changes to the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, say­ing it should be re­struc­tured and re­named the Ed­u­ca­tion­al Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

The re­port said this ESC should be re­spon­si­ble for re­cruit­ing, se­lect­ing and re­view­ing per­son­nel at high­er lev­els of the ed­u­ca­tion ser­vice–prin­ci­pals and vice prin­ci­pals–and should be re­lieved of in­ter­view­ing, which could be done by the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry.

On ed­u­ca­tion:

The re­port al­so rec­om­mend­ed new at­ten­tion should be giv­en to rais­ing the qual­i­ty of the teach­ing pro­fes­sion, which must be­come a na­tion­al pol­i­cy.

�2 All teach­ers should be cer­ti­fied and li­censed by a reg­u­la­to­ry body of teach­ers and oth­er ed­u­ca­tion­al spe­cial­ists called the Na­tion­al Coun­cil for Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards in Teach­ing (NCPST).

�2 The NCPST li­cence should be award­ed for two pe­ri­ods of five years each with an ini­tial ap­pli­ca­tion af­ter a year of in­tern­ship.

�2 Teach­ers should be able to re­new their li­cences for a sec­ond five-year pe­ri­od, af­ter which they would be­come tenured.

Oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions:

�2 The Youth Train­ing Cen­tre in Arou­ca "should not be staffed by prison of­fi­cers but in­di­vid­u­als spe­cial­ly trained in youth de­vel­op­ment and sen­si­tive to the ob­jec­tives of the YTC."

�2 A card call­ing sys­tem should be in­sti­tut­ed at cor­rec­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions to re­duce the il­le­gal use of mo­bile phones.

�2 Drug treat­ment courts should be es­tab­lished in the short­est pos­si­ble time.

For par­ents:

�2 In­dus­tri­al law should al­low par­ents to vis­it the child's school to con­sult with the teacher for one or two hours a month.

�2 Na­tion­al Par­ent/Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion should re-ex­am­ine its role in ed­u­ca­tion of chil­dren and give cre­dence to its ef­fi­ca­cy and ad­vo­ca­cy based on strong ped­a­gog­i­cal prin­ci­ples.