Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Child and gen­der spe­cial­ist Mar­cus Kissoon is ques­tion­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to sus­pend the Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (Mi­LAT) pro­gramme, warn­ing that the move sends the wrong mes­sage about the coun­try’s com­mit­ment to vul­ner­a­ble young men.

The De­fence Min­istry an­nounced this week that Mi­LAT has been sus­pend­ed while the Gov­ern­ment re­views the pro­gramme’s fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty and con­sid­ers re­struc­tur­ing op­tions.

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge has in­sist­ed the ini­tia­tive has not been can­celled but placed on hold un­til fur­ther no­tice.

But Kissoon, who fa­cil­i­tat­ed sev­er­al train­ing pro­grammes at the Mi­LAT cam­pus, ar­gued that the dis­cus­sion should ex­tend be­yond fi­nan­cial con­sid­er­a­tions to the pro­gramme’s broad­er role in na­tion-build­ing.

“The val­ue placed on our na­tion’s boy child has to al­so be at the fore­front. To re­move pro­grammes like Mi­LAT is to re­move in­vest­ment from the Caribbean boy child, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in dif­fi­cult so­cio-eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances,” he said.

Kissoon ac­knowl­edged that gov­ern­ments have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to eval­u­ate pub­lic pro­grammes but warned that sus­pend­ing them of­ten be­comes the first step to­wards per­ma­nent­ly shut­ting them down.

Draw­ing on his own ex­pe­ri­ence work­ing with Mi­LAT trainees, Kissoon said the pro­gramme of­fered far more than mil­i­tary dis­ci­pline.

Kissoon con­ced­ed that Mi­LAT re­quired stronger mon­i­tor­ing and over­sight, in­clud­ing greater in­volve­ment from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, but main­tained those short­com­ings jus­ti­fied re­form rather than sus­pen­sion.

He al­so re­ject­ed Sturge’s ar­gu­ment that Mi­LAT had failed to re­duce mur­ders or vi­o­lent crime, say­ing the pro­gramme was nev­er de­signed to be mea­sured sole­ly by homi­cide sta­tis­tics.

Kissoon ar­gued that judg­ing Mi­LAT ex­clu­sive­ly through crime fig­ures fun­da­men­tal­ly mis­un­der­stands its pur­pose.

He al­so urged Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­vive the col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach of her pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s Chil­dren’s Task Force by en­gag­ing civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions with decades of ex­pe­ri­ence in youth de­vel­op­ment.

Sandy: Sus­pen­sion dis­rupts lives of cur­rent trainees

For­mer Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice tech­ni­cal co­or­di­na­tor Kobe Sandy said the de­ci­sion to sus­pend Mi­LAT dis­rupts the lives of young men al­ready en­rolled in the pro­gramme.

Sandy, who is al­so a PNM Al­der­man at the Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, ques­tioned why the Gov­ern­ment could not re­design the ini­tia­tive while al­low­ing cur­rent trainees to com­plete their stud­ies, warn­ing that many par­tic­i­pants now face un­cer­tain­ty with no clear al­ter­na­tive in place.

He ar­gued the pro­gramme had al­ready demon­strat­ed tan­gi­ble re­turns through ed­u­ca­tion, point­ing to what he said was a 90 per cent CSEC pass rate and grad­u­ates leav­ing with full aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

“That alone is the re­turn on in­vest­ment,” Sandy said, ar­gu­ing that Mi­LAT com­bined aca­d­e­m­ic sup­port with be­hav­iour­al de­vel­op­ment for young men from vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

While sup­port­ing pe­ri­od­ic re­views, Sandy said pre­vi­ous eval­u­a­tions un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion fo­cused on im­prov­ing the pro­gramme with­out in­ter­rupt­ing it.

He ex­pressed con­cern that cur­rent par­tic­i­pants, in­clud­ing those prepar­ing to sit CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions next year, have been left with­out a tran­si­tion plan af­ter staff con­tracts ex­pired and res­i­den­tial op­er­a­tions ceased.

De­spite his crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment, Sandy called on civ­il so­ci­ety, church­es and com­mu­ni­ty groups to step in and sup­port vul­ner­a­ble young peo­ple while the fu­ture of Mi­LAT re­mains un­cer­tain.