Noth­ing kills tourism like a dead tourist. This state­ment is true to the bone. For crime and tourism just do not mix. Would you chose to spend your hard-earned mon­ey and your lim­it­ed va­ca­tion time and trav­el to a coun­try where your have to look over your shoul­der every minute? Would you trav­el to a coun­try where you have to con­sid­er not wear­ing your wed­ding ring or gold chain be­cause it might get stolen off of you? Will you trav­el to a hol­i­day des­ti­na­tion where you have to be locked down af­ter 11 pm? Cer­tain­ly not!

And this is ex­act­ly what po­ten­tial vis­i­tors from New York and Lon­don will con­sid­er be­fore step­ping on that jet to trav­el to T&T. At the end of the day, it is all about choice. Trav­el is about free­ing up your­self; es­cap­ing from work and the rou­tine of dai­ly life. Trav­el is about re­lax­ing, re­cu­per­at­ing, re­ju­ve­nat­ing. Trav­el is al­so about hav­ing fun. Trav­ellers want to vis­it des­ti­na­tions where at least the safe­ty of them­selves and fam­i­lies can be tak­en for grant­ed. And giv­en the choice-which all trav­ellers have-they will chose those des­ti­na­tions where crime is sim­ply not a prob­lem.

Self-im­posed jails

The point here is that it is not the state of emer­gency, per se, that is the is­sue, but the un­der­ly­ing fac­tor of the na­ture and ex­tent of crime in T&T. Even be­fore the state of emer­gency, how could we have felt com­fort­able en­cour­ag­ing vis­i­tors to come to our shores when we as cit­i­zens our­selves are afraid to be a tourist in our own coun­try-afraid to trav­el alone or to iso­lat­ed places or be­ing out af­ter cer­tain hours; build­ing prison walls and high se­cu­ri­ty gates around us; wish­ing that our chil­dren will not come back home to be kid­napped, etc? The fact is that many law-abid­ing cit­i­zens al­ready im­posed vary­ing states of emer­gen­cies on them­selves.

We live in a so­ci­ety where the ban­dits roam free and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens live in self-im­posed jails? But what kind of life is this? Not just for tourists, but for the cit­i­zens of T&T? The state of emer­gency can be seen pos­i­tive­ly. At times, it is not what hap­pens in a coun­try, but what is done about it, that counts. For in­stance, many coun­tries that to­day have a very pos­i­tive im­age on the en­vi­ron­ment-con­serv­ing and car­ing for the en­vi­ron­ment, like Ger­many-have been made some very bad mis­takes in the past, that have de­stroyed their en­vi­ron­ment. But it is the con­sis­tent, con­scious ef­forts to change and to take the ac­tions that are tak­en to coun­ter­act the dam­age-that count to­day. Sim­i­lar­ly, it is not the amount and lev­el of crime that his­to­ry will judge us by, but what we do about it.

Ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sure

At times, ex­tra­or­di­nary sit­u­a­tions re­quire ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures. To the ex­tent that the ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sure of the state of emer­gency is able to clean up the crime prob­lem, this could be pos­i­tive. Con­sid­er al­so, that we all have short mem­o­ries. The neg­a­tive im­age of the state of emer­gency will soon be re­moved if the un­der­ly­ing prob­lems are solved. T&T is al­so for­tu­nate that the world is bat­tling with so many prob­lems at the mo­ment: the trou­bles in the mid­dle East and Libya, falling val­ue of shares and stocks, an over-com­pet­i­tive Chi­na, glob­al­i­sa­tion, etc, that all of the world's at­ten­tion is on T&T and the na­tion­al crime is­sue that it is bat­tling with.

Con­sid­er al­so, that T&Ts tourism in­dus­try is still rel­a­tive­ly small, so that the im­pact of neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty will be equal­ly small, com­pared with larg­er des­ti­na­tions like Ja­maica or Bar­ba­dos, where the im­pacts are like­ly to be greater.

At the same time, we need to con­sid­er a few im­por­tant ques­tions:

a) What are the un­der­ly­ing caus­es of crime in T&T?

b) Will the state of emer­gency con­tribute to wip­ing out the scourge of crime on T&T. And to what ex­tent?

c) What is to be done-how can the deep­er so­cial and eco­nom­ic prob­lems be solved in the long-term?

d) Is there a role that tourism can play in solv­ing some of the wider prob­lems?

In this re­gard, it is im­por­tant to con­sid­er some of the neg­a­tive im­pacts of the state of emer­gency but al­so some of the op­por­tu­ni­ties that can be cre­at­ed as a re­sult.

Crime's so­cio-eco­nom­ic roots

Every­one agrees that crime has deep­er so­cio-eco­nom­ic roots: pover­ty, un­em­ploy­ment, drugs, chid abuse, lack of self-re­spect, lack of hope, lack of love and care. Not every­one agrees on what the so­lu­tions should be. At the same time, every­one seems to blame some­one else for the prob­lem. Usu­al­ly, that "some­one" is the Gov­ern­ment. But we should take a clos­er look at our­selves, and the ac­tions that we our­selves do, to per­pe­trate crime. For in­stance, most of us be­lieve that when the traf­fic light goes am­ber/yel­low, it means to speed up, not to get ready to slow down. And the list goes on and on.

It is these small trans­gres­sions that give us Trinida­di­ans a greater ca­pac­i­ty and tol­er­ance for crime. Which crime is big­ger? The per­son who just speeds through when the light has just gone red, or the per­son who is poor, has a fam­i­ly to feed and if you have two bi­cy­cles, he takes one of them. The fact is that crime has no colour. Crime is crime. We need to adopt a pol­i­cy of ze­ro tol­er­ance. And no amount of pover­ty should cause per­sons to com­mit crime. Crime has be­come more an is­sue of "keep­ing up with the Jons­es"-get­ting the lat­est iphone, jeans or sneak­ers, rather that "bread and but­ter" is­sues. The fact is that the state of emer­gency alone will not solve the crime prob­lems. Each of us needs to look at our­selves and change our own be­hav­iour. Char­i­ty be­gins at home.

An­oth­er point to con­sid­er is that crim­i­nals are al­so hu­man be­ings: they are sons, daugh­ters, men, women, broth­ers, sis­ters, aunts, un­cles, moth­ers, fa­thers, grand­moth­ers and grand­fa­thers, cousins, friends, neigh­bours. Crime can­not be per­pet­u­at­ed un­less it is en­cour­aged. And be­ing un­em­ployed, hope­less and vex with the Gov­ern­ment, or the econ­o­my, is no ex­cuse for crime, as many have found in the last in­ci­dence of vi­o­lence in the Unit­ed King­dom. So if your son comes home with ex­pen­sive clothes, jew­el­ry, elec­tron­ic gad­gets, and the like, and you know that he is not work­ing to af­ford them, and you do not ask where he got them, then you are al­so guilty of per­pe­trat­ing the crime. If we do not ask these hard ques­tions, we will be guilty of com­mit­ting the same crime, as or­di­nary Ger­mans did, when they nev­er both­er to ask where the Jews were go­ing and what was to be­come of them.

Fa­ther­less chil­dren

We like to blame oth­ers, but isn't part of the prob­lem the fact that we live in a fa­ther­less so­ci­ety?

Chil­dren are fa­thered with­out any re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for bring­ing them up, with the re­sult that, chil­dren are mak­ing chil­dren; chil­dren are abused; chil­dren are not able to learn, they be­come dropouts. Drug lords and big­ger crim­i­nals be­come their men­tors and they learn from ear­ly to be crim­i­nals, too. But how many men are able to stand up and look down, just be­low their belts and recog­nise, and take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, for a por­tion of the prob­lem of crime in T&T? What ac­tions are they will­ing to take to atone this dam­age?

Women are al­so to blame. We are com­fort­able tak­ing away oth­ers' hus­bands; not look­ing af­ter our chil­dren prop­er­ly; we love and re­spect our men on­ly by what they could give us (even if they have to beg, bor­row or steal); we turn a blind eye when our hus­bands beat us up or when step­fa­thers in­ter­fere with our chil­dren be­cause "they give us mon­ey."

Women al­so have to get up and take ac­tion against do­mes­tic crime and vi­o­lence. Crime is not just about the poor man. It is al­so about how wealth is made and dis­trib­uted in the coun­try. It is true that T&T is oil-de­pen­dent; most of the in­come from oil ac­crues to cit­i­zens via a tax that the Gov­ern­ment im­pos­es on the oil com­pa­nies; and the gov­ern­ment has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to dis­trib­ute/in­vest the in­come among cit­i­zens. This has re­sult­ed in the for­ma­tion of gov­ern­ment-owned com­pa­nies, air­lines and state en­ter­pris­es, along with the CPEP, URP, DEWD and spe­cial works projects as well as ed­u­ca­tion, health and so­cial ser­vices.

Job op­por­tu­ni­ties ver­sus hand­outs

The Gov­ern­ment dri­ves more than half of the whole econ­o­my. This is why the cut in spend­ing has brought al­most every­thing to a stand­still: con­struc­tion, roads, schools, hos­pi­tals. In ad­di­tion to the Gov­ern­ment, the pri­vate sec­tor al­so gen­er­ates wealth and in­come. A key is­sue is the com­pet­i­tive­ness of these busi­ness­es. Can these busi­ness­es re­al­ly en­ter ex­port mar­kets and be suc­cess­ful? Busi­ness­es sup­port the Gov­ern­ment so that the Gov­ern­ment can pur­sue poli­cies to pro­tect them. This pro­tec­tion pro­vides in­su­la­tion against in­no­va­tion and com­pet­i­tive­ness. This means that the sta­tus quo may be main­tained for the five-year pe­ri­od (un­til the com­pa­ny in­vests in the next win­ning po­lit­i­cal par­ty), but in the long-term, more growth and em­ploy­ment will not re­sult.

The fact is that, with grow­ing in­vest­ments made in the ed­u­ca­tion of T&T cit­i­zens, the ex­ist­ing busi­ness­es are un­able to mop up/cre­ate em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for the tal­ent pro­duced. Where and what types of jobs will all of those bright and tal­ent­ed young peo­ple be do­ing? Where will they find these jobs? Pover­ty can­not be for­ev­er or hu­mane­ly elim­i­nat­ed by hand­outs. It is the cre­ation of job op­por­tu­ni­ties that will re­al­ly count. To cre­ate jobs, we need new in­vest­ments, lo­cal and for­eign. Just like tourists, no in­vestor would want to in­vest in a coun­try where they and their fam­i­lies' lives will be in dan­ger. While for­eign in­vest­ments are im­por­tant and nec­es­sary, we al­so need to fos­ter the growth of in­vest­ments by lo­cals at home.

Where is the ex­tra wealth/sav­ings of T&T na­tion­als parked? In a house in Mi­a­mi; in a Unit­ed States bank? When will this cash re­turn to build the econ­o­my? Do we re­al­ly love and care about our coun­try enough to grow, in­vest in and nur­ture it? You see, this is the dif­fer­ence be­tween a Ba­jan and a Trinida­di­an. A white Ba­jan is Ba­jan first and white af­ter­wards. Trinida­di­ans, how­ev­er, are In­di­an and African and Syr­i­an and Chi­nese first and Trinida­di­ans sec­ond. A large dose of love and re­spect for coun­try and for our fel­low­men and women is as im­por­tant for the elim­i­na­tion of crime as the state of emer­gency.

Cre­at­ing em­ploy­ers, en­tre­pre­neurs

Re­al eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment is not just about cre­at­ing jobs for em­ploy­ees. It is about cre­at­ing em­ploy­ers-busi­ness­es of all kinds, small, mi­cro, medi­um and large-that in turn gen­er­ate even more em­ploy­ment and more en­tre­pre­neur­ial op­por­tu­ni­ties for even more peo­ple. En­tre­pre­neurs, like seedlings and small plants, re­quire con­stant care and nur­tur­ing. Part­ner­ships for a prof­itable fu­ture needs to be de­vel­oped-part­ner­ships be­tween small and large busi­ness­es; be­tween busi­ness and non-gov­ern­ment or­gan­i­sa­tions; be­tween com­mu­ni­ties and all sizes of busi­ness­es; be­tween busi­ness­es and the gov­ern­ment; be­tween and among neigh­bours; youth and church groups. There needs to be equal fo­cus on at­tract­ing lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ments.

For growth, de­vel­op­ment and pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion, the re­al crux of the mat­ter is what are we re­al­ly sell­ing to the rest of the world? What are we sell­ing that the rest of the world is lit­er­al­ly "lin­ing up" to buy? This is re­al­ly crit­i­cal. This is be­cause, as a small is­land econ­o­my, we can­not pro­duce every­thing that we need. Most of what we use/con­sume to­day, is im­port­ed. Even the hoe, cut­lass and brush­cut­ters used by URP/CPEP, have to be im­port­ed. We need to pro­duce and ex­port in or­der to be able to eat and live. In the past, co­coa, sug­ar and cof­fee were the main ex­ports. To­day, T&T is for­tu­nate to have oil, un­like most of its Cari­com neigh­bours. Even Dubai is re­al­is­ing that it has to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my. T&T can­not live by oil alone. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, oil ex­plo­ration or re­fin­ing does not cre­ate many jobs as oil ex­plo­ration, and re­fin­ing is cap­i­tal in­ten­sive.

Com­pet­ing with Chi­na

To­day, glob­al­i­sa­tion is the name of the game. The Chi­nese can pro­duce al­most any­thing cheap­er, and in­creas­ing­ly bet­ter, that most coun­tries: sou­venirs, leather hand­bags, dolls, TVs, fur­ni­ture, cars, trucks, cam­eras, shoes, cloth­ing, de­sign­er goods. Much of the un­em­ploy­ment that we are see­ing glob­al­ly (in the US, UK, Spain and else­where) is a di­rect re­sult of the in­abil­i­ty of many coun­tries and com­pa­nies to com­pete with goods made in Chi­na. Ger­many is one of he few coun­tries that is ben­e­fit­ing from this trade be­cause they ben­e­fit at both ends-the new­ly-rich Chi­nese buy the Mer­cedes Benz and BMWs as end con­sumers, and as man­u­fac­tur­ers, they al­so buy the ma­chin­ery from Ger­many to mass pro­duce their goods.

Now, what is the role for a coun­try like T&T in all of this? What is the eco­nom­ic fu­ture of T&T? How can T&T al­le­vi­ate pover­ty and solve crime? What can we re­al­ly pro­duce and de­liv­er that is unique and spe­cial, that the world will want to buy and even pay a pre­mi­um price for? What are the Chi­nese un­able to pro­duce that we can? If we look around the world, it is clear that as economies emerge, there is need for many goods: food, shel­ter and cloth­ing. Af­ter these needs are filled, what do peo­ple want? They want ser­vices med­ical, health, ed­u­ca­tion, sports, en­ter­tain­ment. They al­so want to save plan­et Earth, trav­el and to have fun.

Rein­vent­ing old prod­ucts

Whether we like it or not, no­body wants to buy many of the old prod­ucts that many Caribbean is­lands had on of­fer (sug­ar, cof­fee, co­coa, ba­nanas). Does it make sense to con­tin­ue pro­duc­ing some­thing if no­body wants to buy it? Would it not make sense to make things that peo­ple want to buy?

Well, the Chi­nese may know how to pro­duce goods very cheap­ly. Would they be equal­ly able to pro­duce, pack­age and mar­ket "fun" or en­ter­tain­ment? While we in T&T are still busy train­ing to be doc­tors, lawyers and teach­ers, the re­al big bucks in sports, en­ter­tain­ment, parks, health, well­ness, mas­querad­ing, play­ing, tour­ing and in­vent­ing, or­ches­trat­ing and de­liv­er­ing un­for­get­table ex­pe­ri­ences.

Trinida­di­ans are nat­u­ral­ly tal­ent­ed in all of the fu­ture, soft in­dus­tries such as en­ter­tain­ment and sport. Like any in­dus­try, these would need to be in­vest­ed in. What if a prospec­tive ban­dit had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come a world-class sports­man? Or even saw sports as an op­por­tu­ni­ty or an al­ter­na­tive form of "em­ploy­ment?" One build­ing block is to think out­side of the box and to con­sid­er de­vel­op­ing in­dus­tries that we can be com­pet­i­tive in and have some clear ad­van­tages. Per­haps we need more sports com­plex­es and more qual­i­fied train­ers; per­haps we need to be train­ing and hon­ing oth­er types of skills; and we al­so need to recog­nise and re­spect those skills that are so crit­i­cal to an econ­o­my's suc­cess: plumbers, elec­tri­cians, wood­work­ers, farm­ers and gard­ners.

The next crit­i­cal area is tech­nol­o­gy. Re­mem­ber the days of snail mail. Look at how many per­sons have ac­cess to com­put­ers, the In­ter­net and mo­bile phones. The tech­nol­o­gy cre­ates a whole new sys­tem of wealth cre­ation-from the hard­ware to the ap­pli­ca­tions and the new busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties (for in­stance, ring tones). Could you imag­ine even ten years ago that ring tones will be a big busi­ness?

It is key to set our eyes on re­al­ly en­gag­ing these new tech­nolo­gies to de­liv­er glob­al ser­vices. Like the sports and en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­tries, the IT sec­tor needs to be recog­nised and sup­port­ed as dri­vers of fu­ture growth. Let this state of emer­gency be an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to re­think our fu­ture and work to­geth­er, hand in hand, to cre­ate a tru­ly ex­cep­tion­al T&T for you and me.

Dr Au­liana Poon

Head, Tourism In­tel­li­gence In­ter­na­tion­al