Kejan Haynes
As the country prepares to host regional leaders in a Caricom crime symposium tomorrow, Political Leader of the MSJ David Abdulah says crime is not a public health crisis, but is a crisis of public policy. He said the lack of a proper policy over decades has created this situation not only in Trinidad and Tobago but throughout the region. Abdulah was speaking at the MSJ’s weekly media briefing.
Addressing the topic of crime he said even though communities are not coming together to create community watch groups, it’s not enough.
“ All of those things are vitally important and we applaud communities coming together to help to protect themselves and their families and their properties. But unless we are far reaching fundamental change, we are not going to get out of this crisis,” Abdulah said.
Abdulah laid out several suggestions which he thinks could ameliorate the crime situation including a suggestion to reform the education sector and the criminal justice sector.
He said the society has always been a violent one, dating all the way back to slavery, and through colonialism, and he said there are other forms of violence like economic violence of income and wealth inequality.
He said this has been going on for decades, and has been getting worse in the last 15 to 20 years.
“ I'm sure the researchers could track the increase in murders, with the increase in the gap between the rich and the poor, Abdulah said. “When people are left to fend for themselves unemployed, denied opportunities to provide for themselves and for their families and so on.”
Beginning with the education system, he wants to see reform and transformation of the curriculum from primary school all the way up.
“So the focus is not on passing exams, but on learning and developing social skills,” he said. “In addition to, of course, the necessary academic and technical skills that the country needs, our next generation of human resource to possess.”
One of the more bold suggestions was to change the hours of schools.
“We also are saying that the hours of school should be extended from 2:30 or 3:00pm secondary schools, primary schools to later in the afternoon, 4:30pm. so that when children get home, their parents will be at home,” Abdulah suggested.
Abdulah said during the extra hours the children should be involved in co curricular activities of music and drama and dance and sport and, “other aspects of the creative imagination.”
He said when children are home but their parents aren’t at home yet, they may fall prey to peer pressure and bad influences in the neighbourhood.
Abdulah also called for a massive employment program which would include reopening the old Petrotrin refinery, and the creation non energy sector jobs in arts and culture or sport.
To deal with the issue of corruption and white collar crime, Abdulah is suggesting the financial intelligence unit be removed from a department at the Ministry of Finance, and made more independent through a separate piece of legislation with the powers of investigation which can then be presented to the DPP and then to the police to lay the charges.
Abdulah’s other suggestions included scanners at the port to search for illegal guns.
Another bold suggestion was for lie detector tests for many in the public service, from the police service, to the Defence Force, customs, BIR and licensing.
“Some people might say that's a violation of constitutional rights. Well, Parliament can deal with that. But we need to ensure that we stamp out corruption in this country, he said.”