Gail Alexan­der

On­ly a work­able plan to which all sub­scribe and con­tribute—and which ac­tu­al­ly re­duces re­gion­al vi­o­lence—will jus­ti­fy call­ing Cari­com’s crime sym­po­sium a suc­cess, says for­mer min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie.

Tewarie, as well as heads of the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion, Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion and Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Cham­bers yes­ter­day com­ment­ed on the open­ing ad­dress­es at the sym­po­sium.

Tewarie said, “Any crit­i­cism of the open­ing will be pre­ma­ture. The (open­ing) speech­es were mea­sured and this re­al­i­ty un­der­scores and ac­knowl­edges the fact that the prob­lem of vi­o­lence, vi­o­lent crimes and mur­ders have be­come over­whelm­ing in this Cari­com re­gion, and that it would be dif­fi­cult at the end of this two-day con­fer­ence ei­ther to claim suc­cess or to meet ex­pec­ta­tions of na­tion­al and re­gion­al pop­u­la­tions who feel be­sieged by crim­i­nal pow­er.”

He added, “I not­ed Cari­com’s Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al spoke of ‘an am­bi­tious pro­gramme of work’ .We wait to see the out­come at the end and how prac­ti­cal, achiev­able and de­liv­er­able it will be.

“The Ba­hamas Prime Min­is­ter recog­nised that ‘our eco­nom­ic prospects will be un­der­mined by con­tin­u­ing vi­o­lence’ and this recog­ni­tion means that our qual­i­ty of life is at stake and the prospects for iso­la­tion and aban­don­ment by the rest of the world are re­al if we con­tin­ue re­gion­al­ly on this tra­jec­to­ry.”

Look­ing at the PM Row­ley’s open­ing speech, Tewarie said, “T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter ac­knowl­edged that 5,459 lives, an alarm­ing num­ber, had been lost to vi­o­lence in T&T over 11 years and that the threat of es­ca­la­tion stares us in the face in 2023, in spite of 43 per cent of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty bud­get be­ing spent on polic­ing ... the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion re­mains: giv­en that it is as it is, what do we do now to make things bet­ter?”

He said the im­me­di­ate task for T&T’s Gov­ern­ment is to re­duce the mur­der rate here sig­nif­i­cant­ly with­in the bound­aries of the law “as fast as pos­si­ble.”

Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ing As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Roger Roach:

“We know that the crime scourge is af­fect­ing all of us and clear­ly, the sys­tems and strate­gies are not giv­ing us the de­sired re­sults. And we hope that this con­fer­ence brings some ac­tion­able so­lu­tions that will see over time a re­duc­tion in crime and cer­tain­ly in the im­me­di­ate fu­ture a re­duc­tion in these vi­o­lent crimes that are plagu­ing the na­tion.”

Roach said the event gave in­sight that the prob­lem of crime was not en­dem­ic to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Oth­er na­tions and oth­er is­lands in the Caribbean are fac­ing the same is­sue and hope­ful­ly when every­body put their heads to­geth­er we can come up with some ac­tion­able so­lu­tions so our pop­u­la­tions feel safe.”

Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce CEO Charles Pash­ley:

“We will have to see what hap­pens post the sym­po­sium, what rec­om­men­da­tions come out of the sym­po­sium and how we could as­sist and sup­port the gov­ern­ment in terms of what is de­cid­ed at the sym­po­sium,” said Pash­ley, who al­so said he would con­sid­er an im­prove­ment in busi­ness men­tor­ship with sports teams and so­cial groups, which was sug­gest­ed by Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley dur­ing her re­marks at the con­fer­ence.

“The cham­ber and many of its mem­bers cur­rent­ly do sup­port a lot of so­cial pro­grammes but I think a struc­tured ap­proach to it where peo­ple have more long-term com­mit­ment to men­tor­ship would be a pos­i­tive for every­one. But there are lots of or­gan­i­sa­tions that do have men­tor­ship pro­grammes and are linked to so­cial clubs. But an ex­pan­sion of those would def­i­nite­ly add val­ue.”

Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee:

“The Prime Min­is­ter as­sert­ed cor­rect­ly that there was a creep­ing nor­mal­cy, in that al­low­ing the ero­sion of our moral and eth­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions, it has con­tin­ued to plague the so­cial bedrock of our so­ci­ety.

“I be­lieve this lends a preg­nant pause for such an ar­ti­cle of re­flec­tion in which we ex­am­ine holis­ti­cal­ly, crime as a bur­geon­ing sep­sis with­in our na­tion, when we tru­ly con­sid­er how to deal with the root caus­es of what has now been qual­i­fied as a pub­lic health emer­gency.”

He added, “I’m heart­ened by the earnest ad­mis­sion that for all the prob­lems we can iden­ti­fy, in­clud­ing ab­hor­rent gun vi­o­lence, that there is an ap­petite to seek so­lu­tions through this re­gion­al fo­rum.”

Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Is­rael Khan, SC:

“Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley de­liv­ered a very low-key wel­come ad­dress to Cari­com lead­ers, meek­ish­ly al­lud­ing to the fact that over 2011 to 2022, T&T lost 5,439 lives to vi­o­lent mur­ders large­ly through use of im­port­ed firearms and am­mu­ni­tion. And not a word fur­ther.

“One would have thought he’d have im­plored our Caribbean lead­ers to fo­cus on who in the re­gion is re­spon­si­ble for the im­por­ta­tion of those guns and am­mu­ni­tions. Why did PM Row­ley not tie in the co­caine trade and laun­der­ing of mon­ey in­to the re­gion with the at­ten­dant im­por­ta­tion of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion. The US gov­ern­ment is quite aware of the or­gan­i­sa­tions and peo­ple in­volved with im­por­ta­tion of guns, am­mu­ni­tion, il­lic­it drugs (es­pe­cial­ly co­caine) and mon­ey laun­der­ing.”

Khan, who al­so slammed the Op­po­si­tion, added, “I bet my last TT dol­lar that not one Cari­com leader at this sym­po­sium would ze­ro in, in a mean­ing­ful man­ner, on the im­por­ta­tion of co­caine and mon­ey laun­der­ing in the Caribbean as the ma­jor con­trib­u­tors which fa­cil­i­tate and en­cour­age vi­o­lence as a pub­lic health is­sue in the Caribbean.”

Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers:

“The Con­fed­er­a­tion agrees with Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley that a sub­stan­tial amount of so­cial work and in­ter­ven­tions has to be done with fam­i­lies, high risk neigh­bour­hoods and schools. School yards have now be­come the gayelle of vi­o­lence and bit­ter con­fronta­tion.” (With re­port­ing by Pe­ter Christo­pher)