An­na-Lisa Paul and

Rhon­dor Dowlat

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has been ac­cused of look­ing for a “scape­goat” to blame for the coun­try’s in­creased crime rate which has seem­ing­ly tak­en on a youth­ful face.

De­fend­ing lo­cal re­li­gious lead­ers and their ef­forts thus far to steer the youth away from crime—Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary, Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS), Vi­jay Ma­haraj, on Thurs­day said they were al­ready do­ing their part, and more.

Last Tues­day, Row­ley called on re­li­gious bod­ies to as­sume greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when it came to tak­ing care of the coun­try’s chil­dren, as he said they had a clear re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and could con­tribute to chang­ing the neg­a­tive be­hav­iours be­ing wit­nessed to­day.

Re­spond­ing yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj de­clared: “He is look­ing for a scape­goat be­cause, as far as I am con­cerned, the re­li­gious arms of the coun­try...the re­li­gious boards and the church­es, we are do­ing the ut­most we can at this pos­si­ble time.”

He shared a lit­tle in­sight in­to what was tak­ing place as he re­vealed: “What is hap­pen­ing is that young peo­ple, 14 years and over, are watch­ing our lead­ers and their be­hav­iour­al pat­terns and they are fol­low­ing it.”

Re­fer­ring to the Sen­ate and the Par­lia­ment as two fish mar­kets where the politi­cians were con­stant­ly bick­er­ing and re­port­ed­ly look­ing af­ter their own in­ter­ests, Ma­haraj con­tin­ued: “The young peo­ple are see­ing that to­day, and we are fight­ing the wave and the tide of try­ing to put them on a track that is re­li­gious­ly ori­en­tat­ed.”

With 40 sec­ondary schools un­der var­i­ous de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards ver­sus the 111 gov­ern­ment sec­ondary schools—Ma­haraj said there were al­ready es­tab­lished re­li­gious pro­to­cols at those schools un­der their purview.

“One of the dic­tates in our schools is that we have a half-hour re­li­gious as­sem­bly in the morn­ing. At lunch time, we have prayers and in the evening, we have prayers,” he said.

Re­call­ing a pre­vi­ous re­quire­ment when de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards were asked to, “Sup­ply a Pun­dit, Priest or Imam to gov­ern­ment schools for re­li­gious knowl­edge,” Ma­haraj was crit­i­cal of this mea­sure which, he lament­ed, was long gone.

He said: “That has com­plete­ly gone to the dogs. It is no longer ex­ist­ing as far as schools are con­cerned, so gov­ern­ment schools don’t have that.”

The SDMS head called on the pop­u­la­tion to see through the politi­cians’ machi­na­tions on elec­tion plat­forms as he crit­i­cised them for mak­ing that call now.

He said: “You have tak­en away the Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal Grant that we used to get.”

Claim­ing he had sub­mit­ted an ap­pli­ca­tion for a Di­vali grant since Au­gust 2022 and had re­ceived no feed­back to date—Ma­haraj de­fend­ed: “If you could find $147 mil­lion to give to Car­ni­val to wine, dine and drink al­co­hol and yet you are us­ing us as the scape­goat...no, I will not be held as a scape­goat,” he de­clined.

“The Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty will not be held as a scape­goat, we are do­ing our job,” he con­clud­ed.

In ad­di­tion, lead­ers of the Mus­lim and Chris­t­ian faiths have called for greater col­lab­o­ra­tion from State agen­cies.

Mean­while, Pas­tor Glad­ston Cuffie, of the Restora­tion Cen­tre, Princes Town, said the Pen­te­costal church­es can­not do this alone and there must be col­lab­o­ra­tion for holis­tic de­vel­op­ment.

He said: “I would love to part­ner with any­body, any agency that would help us to reach the youths.”

Cuffie said: “In terms of my strat­e­gy as a min­istry and as a work­er in try­ing to reach peo­ple, my strat­e­gy is to blend the mes­sage of the gospel with re­al life, to be in­volved in re­al ac­tiv­i­ties, non-re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties, sport­ing, recre­ation­al...and show the youths the rel­e­vance of the gospel to their every­day lives.”

Cuffie urged: “It’s not just about fire and brim­stone and preach­ing about sin and re­pen­tance, but con­nect­ing young peo­ple with re­al is­sues, re­al life, re­al every­day is­sues.”

Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al of the An­ju­man Sun­nat ul Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA), Ha­ji Zain­ool Sarafat, said the mosques need to part­ner with sport­ing clubs in the com­mu­ni­ties which fall un­der the State.

He said: “We can use the sports clubs in the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties to or­gan­ise fam­i­ly days, sports ven­tures, crick­et clubs so we can have crick­et match­es...prob­a­bly fam­i­ly get to­geth­ers as well, so that youths will be able to de­vel­op a con­nec­tion with fam­i­ly and the im­por­tance of fam­i­ly and fam­i­ly life.”

Ear­li­er this month, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher claimed that T&T was deal­ing with an un­nat­ur­al evil and, with­out di­vine in­ter­ven­tion—the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) an­ti-crime strate­gies, in­clud­ing ef­forts to re­duce mur­ders, would be doomed to fail in the ab­sence of prayer. As such, she called for back­up from above.

She said: “An evil has spread over the land and we must recog­nise, those of you who are spir­i­tu­al­ly in­clined, you must recog­nise that this is be­yond the phys­i­cal and un­less we seek the in­ter­ven­tion of that greater spir­it, what­ev­er we may call him, we know we have dif­fer­ent re­li­gions, so who will call him God, who will call him Al­lah, or Kr­ish­na, all of us, if not all of us, 99 per cent of us be­lieve in a su­pe­ri­or be­ing and we need to in­voke the help of that be­ing, if we need to re­al­ly bring Trinidad and To­ba­go back to that place where we want it to be.”