JESSE RAMDEO

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Far­ley Au­gus­tine, says cit­i­zens must bend a knee in their stance against crime.

He made the com­ment on Thurs­day dur­ing Gospel Night, the first event to kick­start the To­ba­go Jazz Ex­pe­ri­ence at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex.

Ac­cord­ing to Far­ley Au­gus­tine, prayer re­mains a crit­i­cal re­sponse to grow­ing crime and vi­o­lence:

"At a time when we’re grap­pling with many so­cial is­sues, we see what is hap­pen­ing with our young peo­ple, I am say­ing, the war we have to fight may not re­quire us to spend more mon­ey on cars and guns, but more time on our knees and sing[ing] praise to God."

The THA Chief Sec­re­tary's com­ment comes just days af­ter the two-day CARI­COM Crime Sym­po­sium con­clud­ed with re­gion­al lead­ers mov­ing to­wards ban­ning as­sault weapons.

Au­gus­tine main­tained that the an­swer to the crime scourge can be found in the holy texts.  He plead­ed with those in at­ten­dance to con­tin­ue of­fer­ing prayers and not be daunt­ed.

"We have an is­land and a coun­try to go to war for,” he said, ‘and we will do that on our knees, and we will do that by singing prais­es to the Most High God.”

He added: “So, keep us in your prayers, keep pray­ing for the is­land gov­ern­ment, keep pray­ing for the coun­try, keep pray­ing for your sec­re­taries, keep pray­ing for all the min­is­ters of gov­ern­ment and even those in op­po­si­tion, and pray to God that He will de­liv­er us from the wrath we have found our­selves in."