KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Sev­er­al civ­il so­ci­ety groups be­lieve white-col­lar crime is con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to vi­o­lent crimes in this coun­try.

As such, The Peo­ple’s Round­table (TPR) is urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to put a hold on pres­ti­gious projects and in­vest in com­mu­ni­ty-based de­vel­op­ment projects in­stead.

TPR is de­mand­ing that the Gov­ern­ment stop fund­ing lux­u­ry apart­ment com­plex­es or build­ing them on state lands.

In­stead, they be­lieve pri­or­i­ty should be placed on com­mu­ni­ty-based projects like the East Port-of-Spain Her­itage City, Fyz­abad Labour He­roes Park and Mu­se­um, and the Oil In­dus­try Mu­se­um and In­for­ma­tion Cen­tre.

Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) leader and TPR’s con­venor David Ab­du­lah said these were just some of the many ini­tia­tives they be­lieved would form the recipe to ef­fi­cient­ly fight against crime.

Ab­du­lah said, “White-col­lar crime and cor­rup­tion is cen­tral to the vi­o­lent crime in the coun­try. Un­til we strength­en our re­sources and in­sti­tu­tions and stop cor­rup­tion and white-col­lar crime, we are not go­ing to be able to get a to­tal han­dle on the gun vi­o­lence and the vi­o­lent crime.”

The group said Gov­ern­ment’s strate­gies to curb the coun­try’s high crime are not work­ing.

TPR said crime­fight­ing was more than just in­creas­ing po­lice-based ini­tia­tives but po­lit­i­cal ones as well.

Fol­low­ing its civ­il so­ci­ety crime sum­mit ear­li­er this year, the group sub­mit­ted a 14-page crime re­port, in­clud­ing a list of oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions they felt would help al­le­vi­ate the coun­try’s high crime.

In its crime re­port, rec­om­men­da­tions were al­so put for­ward to pass leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late po­lit­i­cal par­ty and cam­paign fi­nances, re­view and amend the pro­ceeds of the Crime Act so that the state could eas­i­ly seize as­sets that a per­son could not ac­count for, and amend the Fi­nance Min­istry’s Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit Act to make it an in­de­pen­dent stand-alone au­thor­i­ty with in­ves­tiga­tive pow­er.

With the Bud­get 2024-25 loom­ing, the group is now urg­ing Gov­ern­ment to fo­cus on fund­ing men­tors to help youth from falling in­to a life of crime.

It wants fund­ing for men­tors, coach­es and tu­tors for af­ter-school co-cur­ric­u­lar pro­grammes in sport, cre­ative arts and mu­sic, and more vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion at the sec­ondary school lev­el, as well as com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and im­proved com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre ac­tiv­i­ties.

TPR mem­ber Rubadiri Vic­tor said, “Bud­get 24-25 needs to be seen as a line in the sand in terms of this coun­try and its re­sponse to crime and vi­o­lence. Lit­tle tweaks that need to be done in terms of the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres, mak­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres NGOs, re­al com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and stuff on the boards of com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres, lodg­ing their ser­vices there, coun­sel­lors and stuff in­side all the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres where we could tack­le things like re­cidi­vism, ad­dic­tion, abuse all those kinds of things that hap­pen at com­mu­ni­ty lev­el, in one gen­er­a­tion we could in­ter­rupt and de­crease and erad­i­cate a lot of those things if we use the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres that we have prop­er­ly.

“We have com­mu­ni­ties go­ing through ex­tra­or­di­nary amounts of vi­o­lence and trau­ma. They need trau­ma coun­selling. A lot of the re­peat vi­o­lence, gen­er­a­tional vi­o­lence that we’re wit­ness­ing is be­cause a lot of these things are not be­ing coun­selled. So, we need to start treat­ing these things as pri­or­i­ty and in­ter­rupt the cy­cle of vi­o­lence at all dif­fer­ent points of the curve.”

He added, “We would like to stress that bud­get 24/25 needs to be seen as a line in the sign in terms of this coun­try and its re­sponse to crime and vi­o­lence from white-col­lar to blue-col­lar crime. The lev­els of vi­o­lence that we’re see­ing right now, the type of rage and so­phis­ti­ca­tion of theft, we are past the edge. We’re in plum­met and we need to ar­rest the fall. This cit­i­zens’ crime plan is the first step to us en­gag­ing bud­get 24/25.”

The group sub­mit­ted its re­port to sev­er­al gov­ern­ment min­istries yes­ter­day, in­clud­ing the Min­istries of Fi­nance, Labour and Ed­u­ca­tion.