Ke­jan Haynes

The BBC brought its pop­u­lar World Ques­tions town hall to Trinidad last night at the Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um dis­cussing wide-rang­ing top­ics like crime, cli­mate change and en­er­gy de­pen­den­cy, race re­la­tions, and LGBT+ rights, fea­tur­ing ques­tions, and com­ments, from a live­ly au­di­ence.

The evening's pan­el fea­tured Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Stu­art Young, Econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs, Lawrence J. Ar­joon Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, The He­roes Foun­da­tion and Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes of the op­po­si­tion UNC.

Host­ed by the BBC's Roy­al Cor­re­spon­dent, Jon­ny Dy­mond, who be­gan the dis­cus­sion de­scrib­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go as the most pros­per­ous coun­try in the Caribbean with a rich cul­ture, a sta­ble democ­ra­cy, a grow­ing tourist in­dus­try and valu­able nat­ur­al re­sources. But he ac­knowl­edged is­sues like ris­ing crime, im­mi­gra­tion, and a re­liance on oil.

The first ques­tion packed the most punch, with a gut-wrench­ing ques­tion from an au­di­ence mem­ber whose fa­ther had been mur­dered re­cent­ly, say­ing the TTPS hadn't even ap­point­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tor, and his re­port to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty seemed to be falling on deaf ears as well. The ques­tion: Why weren't suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments able to get a han­dle on crime?

In a lat­er seg­ment of the con­ver­sa­tion, an au­di­ence mem­ber asked why it took the BBC com­ing to Trinidad to host such an im­por­tant dis­cus­sion on these is­sues. MP Ani­ta Haynes and Min­is­ter Young said they were both will­ing to par­tic­i­pate in such de­bates, at which point Dy­mond in­ter­rupt­ed and asked them to make a com­mit­ment right then and there to the au­di­ence to par­tic­i­pate in such a de­bate in the fu­ture, to which they agreed.

Un­der the mi­cro­scope for most of the event, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young took some flak as he em­phat­i­cal­ly called on the pub­lic not to "bas­tardise" the en­er­gy in­dus­try say­ing it re­mains vi­tal to the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al econ­o­my. But he had to be re­mind­ed the ques­tion was about plans to move away from a de­pen­den­cy on hy­dro­car­bons. He al­so faced some jeers for in­cor­rect­ly stat­ing the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act pro­tects against dis­crim­i­na­tion based on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.

BBC World Ques­tions: Trinidad and To­ba­go will air on BBC World Ser­vice Eng­lish on Sat­ur­day 10 June and avail­able on­line af­ter that at bbc.com/world­ser­vicera­dio