Shas­tri Boodan

San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris says fa­thers must play their roles in or­der to curb ris­ing vi­o­lence in T&T.

This was shared while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at Glass­wing In­ter­na­tion­al achieve­ment cer­e­mo­ny for Ser­vol stu­dents at the Life Cen­tre, La Ro­main, on Tues­day.

Par­ris said the re­cent mur­der of Keon An­drews, 33, an em­ploy­ee of the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion, af­fect­ed him bad­ly. He said he had known An­drews since he was a child.

He added that An­drews lost his fa­ther at the age of six to gun vi­o­lence and came to live in his com­mu­ni­ty at the age of eight.

Par­ris said, “By 10 years old he was a part of my life. I was the on­ly fa­ther that Keon An­drews knew. The hard­est time for Keon and I was dur­ing his teenage years. God has a way to guide your path. I stuck it out with Keon. I dis­cov­ered at age 13 he could not read or write, and that con­tributed even more to his anger. The com­mu­ni­ty and peo­ple who knew bet­ter gave up on this child, but I think I knew bet­ter. I was with Keon every step of the day, good, bad and in­dif­fer­ent.”

Par­ris said An­drews begged him to in­ter­vene in his life and he even­tu­al­ly changed.

Par­ris said An­drews made a con­scious de­ci­sion to change his life in the past four years to head down the right path.

“There are so many sto­ries of young fa­ther­less chil­dren, male and fe­male, in my com­mu­ni­ty and I get it. You want to know why? Be­cause the sin­gle most im­por­tant fig­ure in my life is my fa­ther. Had my fa­ther not been around, I could have been just like Keon. So when we talk about vi­o­lence and peo­ple los­ing their lives, I want you young peo­ple to think about Keon An­drews.”

Par­ris ad­vised young peo­ple to get qual­i­fied and be­come skilled.

He said young peo­ple should not set­tle for mediocre jobs. He al­so promised not to em­ploy any young per­son as a dai­ly paid work­er at the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion “be­cause most of the peo­ple who are em­ployed as dai­ly paid work­ers in the SFC come out of jail, they come to work with weapons, drugs, the cor­po­ra­tion is not an easy place to work, its not.”

He told them to get qual­i­fied to ap­ply for a per­ma­nent month­ly paid job at the cor­po­ra­tion and not 10 days.

Nigel For­ge­nie, the coun­try co-or­di­na­tor for Glass­wing, said 88 young peo­ple com­plet­ed the Glass­wing dig­i­tal in­clu­sion pro­gramme.

For­ge­nie praised Ser­vol for its ap­proach to ed­u­ca­tion.