Geisha Kow­lessar

Crime and vi­o­lence, fear and anger, dis­en­chant­ment and hope­less­ness.

Can T&T be tru­ly "fixed?" Can the Po­lice Ser­vice win the war against crime? Can there be an end to drink­ing and dri­ving? Kirk Wait­he, pres­i­dent of the new­ly-formed or­gan­i­sa­tion Fix­in T&T be­lieves that with­in six months, with ef­fec­tive and con­tin­u­ous strate­gies, the coun­try could be on its way to be­com­ing a har­mo­nious, peace­ful na­tion. The or­gan­i­sa­tion's lo­go, a heart, rep­re­sents pa­tri­o­tism. Wait­he, for­mer pres­i­dent of Ar­rive Alive which was found­ed in Jan­u­ary 2005, said Fix­in T&T, which was launched on Mon­day, was fast grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty. The idea, Wait­he said, ger­mi­nat­ed about two or three years ago, adding that some of Fix­in T&T's poli­cies were adapt­ed from Ar­rive Alive.

"We learnt a lot in Ar­rive Alive about many oth­ers things that re­quire ur­gent at­ten­tion," he said. "Even for Ar­rive Alive's ob­jec­tives to be achieved there are many oth­er is­sues that need to be ur­gent­ly ad­dressed–like our ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice. "Mov­ing on to Fix­in T&T and leav­ing Ar­rive Alive af­ford­ed us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­dress oth­er crit­i­cal is­sues that would pos­i­tive­ly im­pact on the is­sues of Ar­rive Alive as well." Wait­he said Fix­in T&T stood on four pil­lars–courage, con­sis­ten­cy, com­mit­ment and con­se­quence. "The per­cep­tion is that there is no con­se­quence so that if a per­son runs a red light–the busi­ness per­son or politi­cian with the stroke of a pen who en­gages in cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ties–they all do it be­cause they be­lieve they would be not caught so they con­tin­ue," he said.?

Two fun­da­men­tal chal­lenges

Ac­cord­ing to Wait­he, the coun­try faced two ba­sic chal­lenges, both of which were eas­i­ly sur­mount­able. One, ac­cord­ing to Wait­he, was lack of law en­force­ment which led to the per­cep­tion of lack of con­se­quence. "Which was why most peo­ple did the things that they do–from the ban­dit who us­es the pen to the ban­dit who us­es the gun," he said. The sec­ond Wait­he iden­ti­fied was il­lit­er­a­cy. "We're too rich to be so poor...Many of our is­sues are symp­to­matic of poor coun­tries, poor economies," he said. "Suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have buried their heads in the sand with re­spect to our il­lit­er­a­cy lev­el and we need to make sure il­lit­er­a­cy is part of the leg­isla­tive agen­da in the next Par­lia­men­tary ses­sion." He de­scribed Fix­in T&T as much more than a "think tank, " but rather "an im­ple­men­ta­tion tank."

Swift jus­tice and con­se­quence

Law en­force­ment, Wait­he said, re­quired three key com­po­nents; knowl­edge that wrong­do­ers would be caught, un­der­stand­ing that once caught there would be swift jus­tice and mean­ing­ful con­se­quence.

"When we have those three things we start ad­dress­ing the is­sue of crime and law­less­ness," he said. "We need lead­ers with courage to com­mit to go af­ter the ban­dits from the hills of Laven­tille to the hills of Good­wood Park, from Beetham Gar­dens to the halls of Par­lia­ment." He added that it must be un­der­stood that the law was ap­plic­a­ble to all and would be en­forced with­out fear of favour.

Why would Fix­in T&T work? Wait­he said what peo­ple chose to ac­cept was much more im­por­tant than what they de­mand­ed. "We have been de­mand­ing for a long time safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, a prop­er health and ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem but what we choose to ac­cept that ul­ti­mate­ly de­fines us as a coun­try," he said.

He said it was on­ly when peo­ple de­cid­ed to ac­cept some­thing dif­fer­ent then they would end up in a dif­fer­ent place with a dif­fer­ent re­sult. "So we cit­i­zens must un­der­stand that it could be fixed and that T&T is ca­pa­ble of cre­at­ing a so­ci­ety for the world to mod­el...That's the ba­sis of Fix­in T&T's con­cept," Wait­he said.

And by sim­ply de­cid­ing to choose some­thing dif­fer­ent was the on­ly way that it could be achieved, he added. "Part of our strat­e­gy is to get cit­i­zens in ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in our democ­ra­cy and in tak­ing our coun­try for­ward," Wait­he added.

Fix­in T&T's mea­sures

Im­me­di­ate mea­sure Wait­he said was "get­ting the law en­force­ment right." Say­ing that safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty were the first job of every leader, Wait­he added that hu­man re­source was a coun­try's most valu­able as­set. He said this must be recog­nised be­cause with­out safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty there could be no sta­bil­i­ty and with­out sta­bil­i­ty no re­al growth could be achieved. "T&T has been in a col­li­sion and is in the emer­gency room and is in­ca­pac­i­tat­ed...We first have to sta­bilise T&T so that we can then fo­cus on spe­cif­ic al­i­ments like il­lit­er­a­cy," Wait­he said. Tak­ing full con­trol of the na­tion's roads, he sug­gest­ed would not on­ly lead to the cre­ation of a more sta­ble so­ci­ety but it would al­so re­duce crime and road car­nage."Every­thing has to pass on our roads...We have a wa­ter fer­ry but even to get to that you have to pass on the roads," he said.

"We can take con­trol of our roads and cause the pub­lic min­i­mal in­con­ve­nience and in so do­ing we bring crim­i­nals to their knees...we can get the guns and ban­dits off the streets." Say­ing that the state of the Po­lice Ser­vice was no fault of the law­men, Wait­he said blame should be placed in­stead on the gen­er­al pub­lic. "Be­cause as cit­i­zens we were part in al­low­ing the politi­cians gen­er­al­ly to al­low the ser­vice to de­gen­er­ate to the state that it is in right now," he said. "A lot of gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy dic­tates how the Po­lice Ser­vice and oth­er in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions op­er­ate." He added that mo­ti­va­tion and morale played crit­i­cal roles, say­ing it was im­pos­si­ble to achieve ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient law en­force­ment poli­cies with a de­mo­ti­vat­ed and de­mor­alised law en­force­ment agency. "The con­di­tions un­der which the po­lice work are pa­thet­ic at best," Wait­he said.

Two Tues­day's ago, mem­bers of Fix­in T&T met with Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an and sub­mit­ted the fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions:

�2 Im­me­di­ate­ly re­vise the com­pen­sa­tion pack­age of the Po­lice Ser­vice.

�2 Im­me­di­ate­ly com­mence a needs as­sess­ment on the work­ing con­di­tions and re­sources of the Po­lice Ser­vice.

"Safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty is an in­vest­ment," Wait­he said. "When we man­age the roads cor­rect­ly crime will not on­ly de­crease, but the trav­el ad­vi­sories will al­so come off the in­ter­na­tion­al Web sites and more peo­ple will start com­ing in the coun­try. "It will lead to an en­tire domi­no ef­fect where busi­ness­peo­ple will open at lat­er hours be­cause they feel safe, so more rev­enue will be gen­er­at­ed and the econ­o­my stim­u­lat­ed." He said it was al­so sug­gest­ed that in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions be­come "strong and tru­ly in­de­pen­dent." "Our politi­cians have cre­at­ed in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions in name on­ly," he added.

Re­cruit­ment of of­fi­cers

At the end of Jan­u­ary 2011, Wait­he said he hoped to cre­ate a bank of 1,000 vol­un­teers. "We feel what T&T re­quires of its cit­i­zens more than any­thing else is the in­vest­ment of time," he said. "These peo­ple would in­vest five hours of their time per month whether it's teach­ing some­one to read and write, fil­ing some­thing in the ju­di­cia­ry so the sys­tem could be­come more ef­fi­cient or help­ing the po­lice with IT."