Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

A 2013 re­port on prob­lems in east Port-of-Spain spear­head­ed by Dr Sel­wyn Ryan had iden­ti­fied lack of train­ing and em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties as one of the se­ri­ous is­sues to be re­solved if young peo­ple in those ar­eas were to be turned from a life of crime.

The re­port sug­gest­ed that trou­bled youths in hot spots ar­eas could be re­formed through jobs and skills train­ing. How­ev­er, its rec­om­men­da­tions, in­clud­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a labour mar­ket in­for­ma­tion sys­tem, and mech­a­nisms for as­sess­ing and cer­ti­fy­ing skills ac­quired through non-tra­di­tion­al modes ex­pand­ed to fa­cil­i­tate the em­ploy­ment of tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al grad­u­ates, have not been ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed.

The re­port al­so rec­om­mend­ed that qual­i­ty work-site learn­ing be linked to school-based ac­tiv­i­ties.

Eight years af­ter the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) pro­fes­sor re­leased a Gov­ern­ment-com­mis­sioned study, an­oth­er com­mit­tee un­der a dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ment is again putting for­ward pro­pos­als for train­ing and em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Some of the oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions of the 2013 re­port in­clud­ed man­dat­ing the po­lice to go af­ter the “big ones” who flood the area with guns and drugs, mak­ing changes to the Teach­ing Com­mis­sion, staffing the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC) with spe­cial­ists in youth de­vel­op­ment and es­tab­lish­ment of drug treat­ment courts.

The Com­mu­ni­ty Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee (CRC) was es­tab­lished last Ju­ly by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley fol­low­ing fiery protests in east Port-of-Spain which re­newed de­bate about the area’s per­pet­u­al un­der­de­vel­op­ment. The Com­mit­tee is tasked with de­vel­op­ing and im­ple­ment­ing “sus­tain­able work­ing so­lu­tions” that ad­dress is­sues af­fect­ing at-risk com­mu­ni­ties.

The CRC, chaired by An­tho­ny Watkins, has been fo­cus­ing on com­mu­ni­ties that have been stereo­typed and mar­gin­alised from Char­lotte Street in the west to com­mu­ni­ties north of the La­dy Young Road, Mor­vant, such as Nev­er Dirty and Mon Re­pos. They are al­so deal­ing with com­mu­ni­ties east of the La­dy Young Road such as Co­conut Dri­ve and Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, as well as Sea Lots, Beetham Es­tate and all of east Port-of- Spain.

Al­though he de­clined to state the size of the CRC’s bud­get, which is ad­min­is­tered through the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice  (MYDNS), he said at some time (post-COVID-19) they might have to cov­er the cost of events staged with­in com­mu­ni­ties. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there may be ex­pens­es as­so­ci­at­ed with me­dia pro­mo­tion of events and ini­tia­tives and some re­search con­duct­ed in the com­mu­ni­ties.

Skills and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment

At the height of the COVID-19 lock­down, mem­bers of the CRC Com­mit­tee met with res­i­dents of these ar­eas and was able to iden­ti­fy their most press­ing needs. These in­clude im­proved in­fra­struc­ture, main­te­nance of apart­ment build­ings and up­grade of open spaces. For some peo­ple, it was un­em­ploy­ment, for oth­ers deal­ing with the trau­ma of the so­cial prob­lems in their com­mu­ni­ties.

The CRC iden­ti­fied as key ar­eas of fo­cus hu­man de­vel­op­ment such as skills train­ing and groom­ing res­i­dents to be­come more em­ploy­able and busi­ness and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. to help res­i­dents start and main­tain sus­tain­able busi­ness­es.

Watkins stressed that the Com­mit­tee was not di­rect­ly de­liv­er­ing ser­vices but would li­aise with var­i­ous stake­hold­ers who per­form these func­tions. He said there many gov­ern­ment agen­cies, cor­po­rate bod­ies, and NGOs well equipped to as­set the needs of the res­i­dents.

He re­ferred to the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) with whom they met in Jan­u­ary, not­ing that the agency’s pro­gram­ming is aligned to much of what the CRC is tasked to ad­dress.

Ac­cord­ing to Watkins, fos­ter­ing com­mu­ni­ty pride and own­er­ship was al­so im­por­tant, as for an area to achieve its full po­ten­tial, res­i­dents must feel pride in where they live. This in­volves keep­ing spaces and streets clean, paint­ing pos­i­tive mes­sages on walls and ap­pre­ci­at­ing a com­mu­ni­ty’s his­to­ry and suc­cess­es over time.

An­oth­er as­pect of com­mu­ni­ty re­cov­ery in­volves so­cial sup­port and co­he­sion by en­sur­ing fam­i­ly life is sta­ble. Even if peo­ple do not come from homes with two par­ents, there should be sup­port or­ga­ni­za­tions to in­cul­cate a sense of be­long­ing such as sports, dra­ma and youth clubs among oth­er pos­i­tive so­cial or­gan­i­sa­tions to keep young peo­ple away from the crim­i­nal gangs which seem to have re­placed many of these groups in re­cent times.

Neg­a­tive stereo­types

On the stig­ma­ti­sa­tion that af­fects com­mu­ni­ties in east Port-of-Spain, Watkins said: “What we want to be able to mon­i­tor is what are some of the cur­rent per­cep­tions and at­ti­tudes and as some of this work is done, we want to see if these at­ti­tudes are chang­ing. We want these com­mu­ni­ties to be­come more ro­bust and em­pow­ered and suc­cess­ful.”

He said there were sys­temic ob­sta­cles that pre­vent­ed res­i­dents from im­prov­ing them­selves and mov­ing out of pover­ty and gave the ex­am­ples of banks re­fus­ing to lend mon­ey to res­i­dents for prop­er­ty im­prove­ments, al­though they would lend mon­ey for hous­es in oth­er ar­eas.

Apart from work­ing in the com­mu­ni­ties, the CRC will be build­ing re­la­tions with in­sti­tu­tions in the coun­try so they can be ed­u­cat­ed on how to deal with dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties.

Dis­cus­sions will be held with the busi­ness cham­bers, the Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T and re­cruit­ment agen­cies on how they deal with job seek­ers from east Port-of-Spain.

“We want to build bridges and re­duce stig­mas,” he said.

They al­so plan to build a re­la­tion­ship with the me­dia as sto­ries done on east Port-of-Spain tend to be neg­a­tive.

“If you look at the quan­tum of re­port­ing on crime, on peo­ple who have suc­ceed­ed and got schol­ar­ships and good jobs, you can say we are not see­ing those sto­ries in the me­dia,” Watkins said.

Apart from the so­cio-eco­nom­ic is­sues, he al­so said that there are is­sues like eth­nic­i­ty and stereo­types that sur­round one group of peo­ple and these per­cep­tions must change.

In Jan­u­ary, mem­bers of the CRC met vir­tu­al­ly with teams from the IDB and ex­plored is­sues of pub­lic man­age­ment and hous­ing and ur­ban de­vel­op­ment in mar­gin­alised com­mu­ni­ties. They are now part­ner­ing to de­vel­op projects in hous­ing, reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of prop­er­ties and fam­i­ly sup­port.

They are al­so work­ing with are the So­cial Work As­so­ci­a­tion on trau­ma in these com­mu­ni­ties and how fam­i­lies can be as­sist­ed and with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion on a school im­prove­ment project in the Mor­vant/Laven­tille area.

ROYTEC has al­so been do­ing a lot of work in the com­mu­ni­ties on schol­ar­ships, bur­saries, train­ing and is now work­ing with the CRC on how the com­mu­ni­ties will be tar­get­ed, as well as get­ting past ROYTEC stu­dents to of­fer their ser­vices in ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing.

They met with of­fi­cials of Hearts and Minds, a group with­in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) that has been as­sist­ing res­i­dents with agri­cul­ture projects. The Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ial De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NED­CO) and the Co-op­er­a­tives Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice are work­ing with the CRC on the es­tab­lish­ment of sus­tain­able busi­ness­es and pos­si­bly ex­pand­ing in­to oth­er ar­eas of food pro­duc­tion and agro-pro­cess­ing. 

The 2013 Re­port

The 436-page re­port, No Time to Quit: En­gag­ing Youth At Risk, was laid in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in March 2013 by then Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Watkins said sig­nif­i­cant work was done in that study and there were “very ap­pro­pri­ate rec­om­men­da­tions” that can be used

Com­ment­ing on the mat­ter, Oropouche East MP, Dr Roodal Moonlilal, ac­cused the cur­rent gov­ern­ment of du­pli­cat­ing that ef­fort.

“It was an enor­mous amount of work done on crime hotspots and the youth that were at risk. The Cab­i­net had ap­point­ed Dr Ryan to do the study. We paid him. This Gov­ern­ment is sim­ply do­ing the process again be­cause the re­port is there and there are many rec­om­men­da­tions that are avail­able to the gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment. There are re­ports that speak about the ur­ban cri­sis and the cri­sis of youth,” he said.

“The then Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter was work­ing on some of the rec­om­men­da­tions to strength­en the coun­selling ser­vices, to reach out to par­ents, to pro­mote home­work cen­tres and to pro­mote in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy in un­der­priv­i­leged so­ci­eties. We were work­ing with church groups. The ex­pan­sion of the po­lice youth clubs oc­curred un­der our ad­min­is­tra­tion. It was just a ques­tion of car­ry­ing on. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, they stopped all of that. To­day the Po­lice Youth clubs can­not get the fund­ing.”

Rec­om­men­da­tions in the 2013 study in­clud­ed:

• Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry go af­ter the “big ones” who im­port guns and il­lic­it drugs in­to Laven­tille.

• The Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion be re­struc­tured and re­named

• The ESC should be re­spon­si­ble for re­cruit­ing, se­lect­ing, and re­view­ing per­son­nel at high­er lev­els of the ed­u­ca­tion ser­vice–prin­ci­pals and vice-prin­ci­pals—and be re­lieved of in­ter­view­ing, which could be done by the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry.

• All teach­ers should be cer­ti­fied and li­censed by a reg­u­la­to­ry body, the Na­tion­al Coun­cil for Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards in Teach­ing (NCPST).

• YTC “should not be staffed by prison of­fi­cers but in­di­vid­u­als spe­cial­ly trained in youth de­vel­op­ment and sen­si­tive to the ob­jec­tives of the YTC.”

• Es­tab­lish­ment of drug treat­ment courts in the short­est pos­si­ble time.