Ger­ard Best

Chris­t­ian lead­ers in T&T have re­spond­ed to the coun­try's es­ca­lat­ing crime rate by call­ing for so­lu­tions based on in­ter­nal char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment and the prop­a­ga­tion of moral val­ues.

A meet­ing of the coun­try's Chris­t­ian lead­ers aimed to find val­ues-based and prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions to the coun­try's spi­ralling crime rate, which has led to wide­spread so­cial fall­out and eco­nom­ic im­pacts.

"The less self-gov­erned we are, the more ex­ter­nal polic­ing we will need. It is time for a more ma­ture so­ci­ety," said Dr Noel Woodroffe, Se­nior El­der of Eli­jah Cen­tre and Pres­i­dent of Con­gress WBN, an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it with op­er­a­tions sup­port­ing val­ues-based com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment and na­tion build­ing ini­tia­tives in more than 90 coun­tries.

Woodroffe was lead­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion on busi­ness sec­tor so­lu­tions for crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Pan­el­lists in­clud­ed Richard Young, chair­man of the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Board, Joseph Re­my, pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions (FI­TUN), Ronald Hinds, chair­man and CEO of Teleios Sys­tems and chair­man of the e-Busi­ness Round­table, and Gre­go­ry Aboud, pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA).

In 2013, crime­cost the T&T econ­o­my some $1.1 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to es­ti­mates quot­ed by Woodroffe.

"Crime de­ters busi­ness in­vest­ment and in­creas­es busi­ness costs," Young said.

Mur­der and vi­o­lent crime are among the most se­ri­ous is­sues. In the first five months of 2014, the coun­try reg­is­tered 183 mur­ders, a 20 per cent in­crease from the com­par­a­tive toll in 2013, ac­cord­ing to news re­ports. Po­lice have linked many of the coun­try's mur­ders to un­der­world el­e­ments con­trol­ling var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ty-based gangs.

"Gang cul­ture is a point­er to the im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ty and a sense of iden­ti­ty in peo­ples' lives," Hinds said.

Re­ports in The Econ­o­mist and Vice News have fur­ther linked vi­o­lent and gang-re­lat­ed crime to en­dem­ic high-lev­el cor­rup­tion and the re­gion­al traf­fic in il­lic­it drugs, as part of a glob­al sys­tem of in­ter­na­tion­al trade.

"We are wit­ness­ing in T&T a fail­ure of the so­ci­ety to tell each oth­er what is right and what is wrong," Aboud said.

"The fo­cus of labour has to be on na­tion build­ing and safe­guard­ing of the moral fab­ric of our so­ci­ety," Re­my said.

The pan­el al­so aimed to ad­dress crimes such as fraud, bribery, tax eva­sion and un­der­pay­ment.

"Busi­ness­es have to man­i­fest the val­ues they pro­fess," Young said.

Called Prayers Plus, the three-day meet­ing was held at the Hilton Trinidad, Port-of-Spain from May 27 to 29. It was the brain­child of Cleve­land Thomas, a for­mer pub­lic ser­vant, who says that hefelt the need and the call of God to gath­er the Body of Christ to­geth­er to pray for our na­tion con­cern­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion," ac­cord­ing to the con­fer­ence Web site.

Themed "Find­ing So­lu­tions to Crime," the Prayers Plus meet­ing aimed to bring to­geth­er the lead­ers of the Chris­t­ian faith in the coun­try to dis­cuss crime chal­lenges in or­der to find com­mon so­lu­tions built on foun­da­tion­al bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples such as jus­tice, in­tegri­ty, ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, com­mu­ni­ty and love.

Apart from the ses­sion on the busi­ness sec­tor, oth­er con­fer­ence ses­sions fo­cused on youth, women, the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, the ju­di­cia­ry and the me­dia. On the clos­ing day, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie called for a greater part­ner­ship be­tween the church and the ju­di­cia­ry in the fight against crime.