Kevin Baldeosingh

A draft pol­i­cy doc­u­ment on the Vi­sion 2030 pro­gramme tout­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has linked URP and Cepep to crime and cor­rup­tion. The doc­u­ment, mean­while, re­veals that the Vi­sion 2020 pro­gramme un­der the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion failed to achieve most of its goals.

Ti­tled "Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy 2016?2030," the Vi­sion 2030 draft pre­pared by the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment is one of sev­er­al key pol­i­cy doc­u­ments now be­fore Cab­i­net which have not yet been re­leased to the pub­lic.

In re­spect to crime, the draft notes, "His­tor­i­cal­ly the re­sponse of pub­lic pol­i­cy to the in­ad­e­quate pace of pri­vate sec­tor job cre­ation has been to in­sti­tute 'make-work' pro­grammes to pro­vide tem­po­rary em­ploy­ment." The neg­a­tive ef­fects of these pro­grammes, the draft says, in­clude de­pen­den­cy, en­ti­tle­ment, and labour short­ages. "In ad­di­tion to these ef­fects, these pro­grammes have al­so been at­tend­ed by cor­rupt prac­tices and have been a source of in­come for per­sons en­gaged in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty," the doc­u­ment ad­mits.

The draft says, "For the last two decades, Trinidad and To­ba­go has been af­flict­ed by un­ac­cept­ably high rates of se­ri­ous crimes, par­tic­u­lar­ly mur­ders. While some of the mur­ders are linked to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, the ma­jor­i­ty are re­lat­ed to gang vi­o­lence which is in turn linked to the move­ment of drugs and the as­so­ci­at­ed ac­qui­si­tion of firearms."

Ta­ble One shows the mur­der to­tals from 1995 to 2015, which be­gan surg­ing up­wards in the third year of the Man­ning regime. In that same year, the bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for URP was in­creased more than three­fold to $300 mil­lion. The Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep) was es­tab­lished by Cab­i­net in 2002 with an ini­tial al­lo­ca­tion of over $378 mil­lion.

The draft says, "The crime de­tec­tion rate showed lit­tle change with 16.8 per cent in 2010 and 16 per cent in 2014, but im­proved slight­ly to 22 per cent in 2015. How­ev­er, in spite of the in­creased de­tec­tion, less than a quar­ter of re­port­ed crimes were be­ing solved."

The draft al­so iden­ti­fied child abuse and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence as key ar­eas of con­cern. "In terms of the fam­i­ly, the lat­est avail­able da­ta re­vealed that the num­ber of child abuse cas­es de­clined slight­ly but re­mained high at above 4,000 cas­es, from 4,760 cas­es dur­ing 2007?2012, to 4,158 cas­es dur­ing 2015?2016," the doc­u­ment says. "How­ev­er, the da­ta on the num­ber of Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence cas­es were of great­est con­cern, as the sta­tis­tic in­creased by an alarm­ing 57 per cent from 70,769 cas­es dur­ing 2006-2007 to 125,166 cas­es dur­ing 2013-2014."

As part of a crime re­duc­tion pack­age, the draft pro­pos­es new leg­is­la­tion to tack­le cor­rup­tion, in­clud­ing as­set for­fei­ture, whis­tle blow­er pro­tec­tion, and Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Amend­ment Bill 2015, as well as in­creased pow­ers for the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty. There are al­so plans to build a state-of-the-art Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, merge the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau and the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau to tack­le white-col­lar crime, and make the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in­to a se­mi-au­tonomous agency.

The draft has not been re­leased to the pub­lic. "The doc­u­ment re­mains in draft form since fur­ther na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tions on the rec­om­men­da­tions and on the pro­posed pri­or­i­ties, strate­gies and key shifts must be dis­cussed and de­bat­ed. A Na­tion­al Vi­sion 2030 Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Strat­e­gy will be de­vel­oped to so­lic­it the views of cit­i­zens and stake­hold­er groups," says the Plan­ning Min­istry.

How Vi­sion 2020 failed

In the Fore­word to the Na­tion­al Strate­gic De­vel­op­ment Plan doc­u­ment, Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is states: "Through the adop­tion of a com­pre­hen­sive na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment plan­ning frame­work, the Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy, Vi­sion 2030, will lay the foun­da­tion and path­way for at­tain­ing de­vel­oped coun­try sta­tus by the year 2030."

Ac­cord­ing to a sur­vey car­ried out by Mar­ket Opin­ion and Re­search In­ter­na­tion­al (MORI) in 2007, half of the peo­ple sur­veyed felt Vi­sion 2020 would be suc­cess­ful. But, even by that year, the pro­gramme had al­ready failed to achieve most of its bench­marks, as shown in Box One. This de­spite the fact that the Gov­ern­ment was al­ready claim­ing sig­nif­i­cant progress. And, nine years lat­er, the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues to as­sert that Vi­sion 2020 is a re­sound­ing suc­cess and on­ly the time­line has to be ex­tend­ed, even though its own sta­tis­tics be­lie this claim.

Mur­ders 1995-2015 (TA­BLE 1)

Year Mur­ders

1995 122

1996 107

1997 101

1998 97

1999 93

2000 120

2001 151

2002 171

2003 229

2004 261

2005 386

2006 371

2007 391

2008 547

2009 506

2010 473

2011 343

2012 383

2013 407

2014 403

2015 420

Source: TTPS

Vi­sion 2020 suc­cess rate

Suc­cess rate of sam­ple of Vi­sion 2020 projects

AREA TO­TAL GOALS ON­GO­ING/PEND­ING DEAD­LINE AT­TAINED SUC­CESS RATE

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty 87 78 9 10%

Gov­er­nance 30 26 4 13%

In­fra­struc­ture 77 66 11 14%

Health 32 29 3 9%

Source: Draft Na­tion­al Strate­gic Plan, 2007

This sam­ple in­di­cates that, con­trary to Gov­ern­ment claims in 2007, the over­all suc­cess rate of Vi­sion 2020 was a dis­mal 11 per cent.

Vi­sion 2020 per­for­mance

In 2016, the Draft Vi­sion 2030 doc­u­ment states that Vi­sion 2020 had "an im­ple­men­ta­tion rate of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70 per cent in four years". But the draft's own sta­tis­tics show that on­ly 18 per cent of ob­jec­tives were achieved, and 30 per cent showed no sig­nif­i­cant progress. In re­spect to goals like "Ef­fec­tive gov­ern­ment," the achieve­ment rate was a dis­mal three per cent; for com­pet­i­tive busi­ness, 17 per cent; and for de­vel­op­ing in­no­v­a­tive peo­ple, four per cent. (See Box Two.)

Goal On­go­ing % Achieved % Failed %

In­no­va­tion 54% 4% 42%

Car­ing So­ci­ety 48% 31% 21%

Com­pet­i­tive Busi­ness 59% 29% 12%

Ef­fec­tive Gov­ern­ment 59% 3% 38%

To­tal 51% 18% 30%

Source: Min­istry of Plan­ning