KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Trans­form­ing T&T’s ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, re­form­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion, laws and re­struc­tur­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth are some of the rec­om­men­da­tions The Peo­ple’s Round­table (TPR) plans to put forth to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar this week.

TPR Con­venor David Ab­du­lah shared de­tails at a press con­fer­ence at the Para­mount Build­ing, San Fer­nan­do, from the Civ­il So­ci­ety Crime Sum­mit held on Jan­u­ary 31. Ab­du­lah did not re­gard oth­er re­cent crime fo­rums, say­ing many had po­lit­i­cal agen­das. He said, the TPR sum­mit had no grand­stand­ing or bias and had the par­tic­i­pa­tion of over 30 civ­il so­ci­ety groups. As mem­bers fi­nalise the re­port in the next day or two, he said TPR will dis­trib­ute copies to all Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and State in­sti­tu­tions and in­clude it on its web­site for pub­lic con­sump­tion.

Ab­du­lah said re­struc­tur­ing and re­form­ing the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem came up in every work­ing group, with par­tic­i­pants be­liev­ing that un­less there is a change at the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school lev­el, there will be an­oth­er gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple at­tract­ed to vi­o­lent crimes and gangs in the next 20 years. An­oth­er is­sue shared by all work­ing groups was the need to re­form the Con­sti­tu­tion and laws.

“Whether it is re­form­ing how the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit op­er­ates, mov­ing from a de­part­ment in the Min­istry of Fi­nance to be a stand­alone in­sti­tu­tion with teeth. We need to ad­dress, there­fore, gov­er­nance so that the re­ports and rec­om­men­da­tions and stud­ies made do not lie on shelves gath­er­ing dust but are im­ple­ment­ed by those who have re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” Ab­du­lah said.

Oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions in­clude us­ing com­mu­ni­ty spaces to en­sure peo­ple can de­vel­op skills for hu­man po­ten­tial and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and find­ing ways to re­fash­ion com­mu­ni­ties so mem­bers feel in­clud­ed. Ab­du­lah said the re­port al­so shared the need to pro­vide al­ter­na­tive in­ter­ac­tions for young peo­ple on the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ty blocks to steer them away from peer pres­sure. 

The rec­om­men­da­tions came af­ter iden­ti­fy­ing a pletho­ra of prob­lems con­tribut­ing to crime. Ab­du­lah said par­tic­i­pants shared the con­sen­sus that the crime and vi­o­lence is­sue was not just about more laws, bet­ter polic­ing, more po­lice of­fi­cers, more po­lice ve­hi­cles, mon­ey for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty or is­su­ing more Firearm User Li­cences.

“That ap­proach to deal­ing with the prob­lem has not re­sult­ed in a safer, more peace­ful so­ci­ety. In fact, things have got worse. More re­sources have ac­tu­al­ly meant less safe­ty. There are many con­tribut­ing fac­tors to our cri­sis. There­fore, all of these re­quire ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion. We can­not take a lim­it­ed tun­nel vi­sion ap­proach to the is­sue of crime and vi­o­lence.”

The sum­mit al­so found that hor­rif­ic crimes gath­er pub­lic at­ten­tion while ig­nor­ing white-col­lar crimes, even though they may fu­el vi­o­lence. Ab­du­lah said it was easy to fin­ger the young men pulling the trig­ger while ig­nor­ing the en­trenched sta­tus quo that led to them be­ing in gangs.

The sum­mit found that crime and vi­o­lence are the re­sults of pol­i­cy fail­ures span­ning over 30 years and sev­er­al gov­ern­ments, which led to grow­ing so­ci­etal in­equity and in­equal­i­ty and an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that does not pro­vide re­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple and chil­dren to ful­fil chal­lenges.

“This has led, for ex­am­ple, to the gangs be­com­ing states with­in states and pro­vid­ing the so­cial sup­port that the State ought to be pro­vid­ing, so you hear sto­ries that if the gang leader is killed, who is go­ing to take care of granny’s med­ical bills. Who is go­ing to send the chil­dren to school? Who is go­ing to buy the school books? Who is go­ing to fi­nance the Christ­mas par­ties? Who is go­ing to sup­port the chil­dren’s sports groups.”

Ab­du­lah said there is a feel­ing that some pro­grammes do not im­prove peo­ple’s lives and en­able so­cial mo­bil­i­ty but fo­cus on grants that can lead to de­pen­den­cy and a means of cre­at­ing par­ty loy­al­ty.