Sev­er­al ini­tia­tives will be com­ing very soon which might be able to in­volve and pro­tect T&T’s chil­dren, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day.

He spoke about the ini­tia­tives at a me­dia brief­ing at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on his re­turn from at­tend­ing the Guyana En­er­gy Con­fer­ence and the 46th Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing.

Com­ment­ing on the ef­fect of crime on young peo­ple and strate­gies from the po­lice and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, Row­ley said as crime es­ca­lates, the in­ci­dents that have been oc­cur­ring get close to all cit­i­zens.

“Whether I’m here or not, those who take the de­ci­sion to com­mit crime, they’re pro­ceed­ing apace and we have to keep ad­just­ing and strength­en­ing our abil­i­ty to re­spond,” he said.

“There are some ini­tia­tives that will be com­ing our way in the very near fu­ture which we be­lieve might be able to in­volve and pro­tect the most vul­ner­a­ble – our chil­dren – and that doesn’t al­low us to es­cape the fact that some of that vi­o­lence is in­side the school too.”

Row­ley said one of the things that was dis­cussed at the Cari­com meet­ing was the kind of in­doc­tri­na­tion from the art form young peo­ple are ex­posed to, where vi­o­lence is en­cour­aged and glo­ri­fied.

He said the trau­ma faced when peo­ple lose loved ones and see the out­comes of vi­o­lent crime was raised, in­clud­ing by St Kitts Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ter­rence Drew, who not­ed the do­mes­tic vi­o­lence chil­dren are ex­posed to in the home. Row­ley said Drew spoke about chil­dren be­ing dam­aged af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing vi­o­lence in the home or the fact that be­ing brought up with­out any sem­blance of train­ing or val­ues is be­com­ing more plen­ti­ful in our so­ci­eties.

Gov­ern­ment has been asked to con­sid­er es­tab­lish­ing some kind of com­mis­sion where fam­i­lies can get help and be­come more ef­fec­tive in rais­ing chil­dren, he re­vealed.

“Be­cause what we’re tak­ing for grant­ed is no longer there. In an ear­li­er time, the par­ent­ing of chil­dren by par­ents, grand­par­ents, so­ci­ety and the vil­lage was suf­fi­cient to bring them up with a cer­tain amount of per­spec­tive. That’s no longer as­sumed to be there,” Row­ley said.

“There­fore, a wider, larg­er ef­fort is to be re­quired be­cause the bring­ing up of our chil­dren is a re­quire­ment if we’re to over­come this pe­ri­od of vi­o­lence and vi­o­lent crime that trau­ma­tis­es us dai­ly.”

One of the ways to do that, Row­ley said, in­volves the use of school premis­es. Not­ing that sev­er­al schools in T&T are locked from af­ter 3 pm un­til the next day, he said: “The so­ci­ety can be­gin to make use of these premis­es, in­volv­ing teach­ers, par­ent–teach­ers, com­mu­ni­ties and vol­un­teers with sig­nif­i­cant Gov­ern­ment sup­port to bring about the kind of di­a­logue, en­gage­ment and con­tact hours with youths and old­er peo­ple, with pro­fes­sion­al and non-pro­fes­sion­als, to cre­ate a so­ci­ety where the con­cerns about crime is not just a hand­ful of politi­cians try­ing to make pol­i­tics out of it but a so­ci­ety that’s try­ing to save it­self.”

Clean up the mu­sic

Row­ley said if the ex­pres­sion of art or mu­sic pro­vokes and glo­ri­fies neg­a­tives in the form of vi­o­lence, it ought to be con­demned. He said Cari­com lead­ers dis­cussed the is­sue at length.

“But we made a dis­tinc­tion be­tween con­demn­ing it and ban­ning it. To talk about ban­ning some­thing is sim­ply to make it more at­trac­tive to those who’ll want to use it,” he said

He al­so not­ed that in to­day’s tech­no­log­i­cal world, one can­not ban some­thing like that.

“You might say you don’t want it on TTT or a pub­lic space but so­cial me­dia will en­sure it is avail­able ... now every­body is a pub­lish­er. That’s the dilem­ma we’re in,” he said, adding that to con­demn art forms ap­peal­ing to the base and derelict na­ture and the worst con­di­tions, “es­pe­cial­ly if it en­cour­ages vi­o­lence as an act to par­tic­i­pate in and the den­i­gra­tion of women as some of those lyrics are, then clear­ly we don’t shy away from con­dem­na­tion”.

“While we don’t think that at­tempt­ing to ban ... but we can re­strict in pub­lic spaces and on pub­lic air­waves, cer­tain kinds of taste­less so-called gen­res. We just have to be re­al­is­tic and not be afraid to say we ac­cept or don’t ac­cept,” the PM said.

“That’s why I’m say­ing the con­tact and en­gage­ment of youths where they are is now to be a pri­or­i­ty for the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry and the use of our fa­cil­i­ties in pos­i­tive con­tact.”

Row­ley said those in the mu­sic busi­ness who un­der­stand that dam­age can be done “may be able to help to clean up the lyrics”.