Senior Reporter
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt
Minister of Youth Development and National Service Foster Cummings has summed up Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s contribution to the 2024 Budget debate as her usual doom and gloom response in an attempt to scare the population.
“While they spend all of their time trying to scare the population, yes, we must pay attention to the crime situation, but when they open their mouths, all they can do is try to whip up fear among the population in the hope that the population will take them on and return them to government, so they can once again empty the Treasury as they have done in the past,” Cummings said in the Lower House yesterday.
Persad-Bissessar spent hours responding to Minister of Finance Colm Imbert’s fiscal presentation, criticising Government’s continued handling of crime and citizens’ standard of living among other things.
Speaking after Persad-Bissessar, Cummings said Government was not merely allocating funds but investing in young people by arming them with skills and providing opportunities. He said dealing with crime was not just about detection but also ensuring youth development programmes to steer young people away from a life of criminality.
“Once again, we have heard over the last few hours the usual doom and gloom response from the UNC to the Budget put forward by the Minister of Finance. Every year, it is the same type of response, the same type of scare tactics, with no commitment to the development of this country or the citizens.”
Persad-Bissessar proposed several anti-crime measures, but Cummings said while the United National Congress (UNC) claims it has crime-fighting experience, the population does not want it. He recalled the UNC running its 2010 General Elections campaign on escalating crime and taxation, which resulted in the country voting its People’s Partnership coalition into administration. However, he said the country voted the UNC back to opposition after realising the party, in fact, had no solution.
“In 2020, the UNC ran a campaign on crime and taxation again, and the country, understanding their ways of the past, returned the PNM to the governance of T&T. When you listen to them, it is like the calypso from the late Winston Bailey The (Mighty) Shadow, ‘the cat needs the rat, but the rat does not need that kind of the love.”
Cummings said the UNC’s attempt at cracking the crime problem entailed several changes in the Minister of National Security’s portfolio and the cancellation of an order of offshore patrol vessels that left T&T’s borders porous and open to the illegal firearms and drug trade. What stood out most to him was the People’s Partnership’s 2011 State of Emergency (SoE), which he said led to the arrests of thousands of urban youths. He said the only positive results of the SoE were the civil cases against the State for the treatment meted out to young people by the PP-led administration.
Cummings said Government is addressing some of the root causes of crime by targeting youths, and the Budget provides the Ministry of Youth Development and National Service with funding to execute numerous programmes. He said HYPE, MUST, NESC, YTTEP, CCC, GAP, NEDCO and YIA were just a few existing programmes available to young people, regardless of which constituency they reside. Others include Amplify, a youth production and life skills programme that will enrol 100 people this year who are interested in working or operating studios. The National Leadership Training Programme also seeks to harness leadership among young people in collaboration with the University of the West Indies’ St Augustine Campus, he said, while Project Trending is for young business owners who want to use social media to expand their reach.
Cummings announced that in addition to marketing programmes through traditional and social media, Government will allocate $5 million for a Youth and Education Caravan to visit communities and let young people know of all programmes available under various ministries.
In terms of national service, he said Government will present legislation to Parliament to set up the Youth Development Agency to execute the youth national services of the Government. Cummings said Government started work on the Mausica National Service Complex by upgrading the old Mausica Teachers’ College to serve 300 cadets in a residential programme when completed. It will also develop another complex at Petrotrin’s Beach Camp in Palo Seco. He said Government also plans to expand the MILAT and MYPart residential programme run by the Defence Force and develop transition homes for people exiting residential-care homes.
Cummings said Government had completed the refurbishment of St Michael’s School for Boys to deliver a residential restorative development programmes for boys needing supervision. These boys may be beyond parental control, charged but not convicted of a criminal offence due to a lack of evidence, have inadequate home supervision, gang affiliation or an absence of secure accommodation required by law. Cummings said trained teachers and vocational instructors will operate the upgraded facility.