Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor – Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion MP for Laven­tille East/Mor­vant Chris­t­ian Birch­wood is ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of fun­da­men­tal­ly mis­un­der­stand­ing the pur­pose of the Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (Mi­LAT) pro­gramme, ar­gu­ing that it was nev­er in­tend­ed to be judged on fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty.

The crit­i­cism comes af­ter De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge an­nounced that Mi­LAT had been sus­pend­ed while the Gov­ern­ment re­views its fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty and ex­plores op­tions to re­struc­ture the pro­gramme.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s Op­po­si­tion news brief­ing, Birch­wood said Mi­LAT was de­signed to de­liv­er so­cial re­turns by trans­form­ing the lives of vul­ner­a­ble young peo­ple, not to gen­er­ate eco­nom­ic prof­it.

“The pro­gramme was specif­i­cal­ly de­signed to tar­get the most vul­ner­a­ble in our so­ci­ety and it is re­form-based,” Birch­wood said. “It was de­signed to be so­cial­ly vi­able. There’s a ma­jor dif­fer­ence there.”

He ar­gued that as­sess­ing the pro­gramme pri­mar­i­ly on its fi­nan­cial cost ig­nores its broad­er pur­pose and im­pact.

Birch­wood al­so re­ject­ed Sturge’s ar­gu­ment that Mi­LAT had failed to curb ris­ing vi­o­lent crime de­spite op­er­at­ing for years, de­scrib­ing the com­par­i­son as flawed.

He said that if the Gov­ern­ment’s rea­son­ing is that pro­grammes should be dis­con­tin­ued be­cause crime con­tin­ues to rise, the same log­ic would have to ap­ply to law en­force­ment spend­ing.

“By that log­ic, we should be sus­pend­ing the TTPS be­cause crime has been in­creas­ing even though we have been spend­ing more be­hind na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty,” Birch­wood said, not­ing that the Gov­ern­ment had re­cent­ly sought hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in ad­di­tion­al fund­ing for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

He de­scribed the Min­is­ter’s po­si­tion as a “re­duc­tion­ist ar­gu­ment” that wrong­ly sug­gest­ed crime could be solved by, or blamed on, a sin­gle pro­gramme.

In­stead, Birch­wood ar­gued that crime re­quires a mul­ti-pronged re­sponse com­bin­ing polic­ing with so­cial in­ter­ven­tion ini­tia­tives such as Mi­LAT.

High­light­ing what he de­scribed as the pro­gramme’s mea­sur­able suc­cess, Birch­wood point­ed to the aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments of its 2024 grad­u­at­ing class.

He said about 80 cadets grad­u­at­ed last year, with 51 per cent earn­ing full CSEC cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The co­hort al­so record­ed an 86 per cent pass rate in Eng­lish Lan­guage and a 66.3 per cent pass rate in Math­e­mat­ics.

Draw­ing on his ex­pe­ri­ence as a teacher, Birch­wood said those re­sults were par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant.

“For a co­hort of young men at that age, for two-thirds of that co­hort to pass Math­e­mat­ics, where a lot of young peo­ple strug­gle, that is no easy feat,” he said.

“It shows the im­por­tance of the pro­gramme and it has con­tributed tremen­dous­ly to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and it has shaped lives.”

Birch­wood said tes­ti­monies from for­mer trainees, in­clud­ing grad­u­ates who cred­it­ed Mi­LAT with giv­ing them a sec­ond chance, demon­strat­ed that the pro­gramme fos­ters dis­ci­pline, ca­ma­raderie and op­por­tu­ni­ties that ex­tend well be­yond aca­d­e­mics.

He warned that sus­pend­ing the ini­tia­tive risks de­priv­ing vul­ner­a­ble young peo­ple of a proven path­way to ed­u­ca­tion and pro­duc­tive cit­i­zen­ship.

Mean­while, Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Symon de No­bri­ga ques­tioned what he de­scribed as the long-term cost of re­mov­ing pro­grammes aimed at steer­ing at-risk youth away from crime.

“What is the cost of not hav­ing them?” he asked. “What is the cost not just to the na­tion to­day, but to our fu­ture?”

De No­bri­ga said the Gov­ern­ment should ex­plain when Mi­LAT would re­sume, what al­ter­na­tive plans ex­ist for af­fect­ed trainees, and how it in­tends to ad­dress youth crime with­out pro­grammes fo­cused on ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion.