Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has dou­bled down on his com­ments that moth­ers are not hold­ing their sons ac­count­able, re­sult­ing in a rise in crime in To­ba­go.

Dur­ing a Face­book Live yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine de­fend­ed his state­ments, say­ing all in­sti­tu­tions must act in the fight against crime. He ac­knowl­edged that it’s easy to blame the Gov­ern­ment or the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, ad­mit­ting he does so as well. How­ev­er, the Chief Sec­re­tary re­it­er­at­ed that every­one has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

He em­pha­sised that the fam­i­ly is the first so­cial in­sti­tu­tion with the most sig­nif­i­cant re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in this mat­ter, “whether we like it or not.”

“We all have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that light reigns supreme over dark­ness,” Au­gus­tine said, ac­knowl­edg­ing the state­ments were made at a Di­vali func­tion.

“So I want­ed to just share that with you. Now you have the facts, and you don’t have to just take my word for it. I’m say­ing every one of us has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, every one of us. And the fam­i­ly is the first so­cial in­sti­tu­tion. There­fore, the fam­i­ly has the most sig­nif­i­cant re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to bear in this mat­ter, whether we like it or not.”

He ac­knowl­edged that men be­ing ab­sent from the lives of youth was al­so to blame, but he told moth­ers they need to say some­thing if their chil­dren are in­volved in crime. 

Au­gus­tine en­cour­aged the pub­lic to lis­ten to his speech in its en­tire­ty so that it is not tak­en out of con­text, mis­con­strued, or over­shad­owed by a sen­sa­tion­al head­line.

“I know many peo­ple have not even read the ar­ti­cle; even I can tell you, I did not even read the ar­ti­cle. I just saw a head­line on In­sta­gram ear­ly this morn­ing,” he ad­mit­ted.

—Ke­jan Haynes