Job-Davis: Control entry to T’bgo

Junior Minister of Community Development, and Tobago East MP, Eudine Job-Davis, said crime in Tobago could be cut by controlling how persons entered the isle. Her suggestion came in the debate on the Budget on Monday night in the House of Representatives. She lamented the recent rise in crime in Tobago, some of which was committed by persons coming from Trinidad. Alluding to a team-up of Tobagonian and Trinidadian criminals, she said: “Experience from Trinidad and knowledge of the terrain from Tobago is a lethal combination.” Job-Davis urged a more-controlled entry, whether by sea or air, into the sister isle. “I’d like a closed circuit television at the airport and Scarborough Port.”

She lamented that persons arriving from Trinidad simply got off the boat at Scarborough and immediately mingled with the Tobagonian crowd waiting there. She suggested that arrivees should instead be initially monitored, saying, “Let them channel passengers through a control exit.” Another concern in Tobago she said was HIV/AIDS. “Our ministry has initiated an anti-AIDS caravan. Women need to learn to take care of themselves, and to say ‘no!’” Referring to the proposed Offences Against the Person (HIV Amendment) Bill 2004, she said she was heartened that the Government was criminalising the intentional transmission of HIV/AIDS.

“As MPs let us take this mantle of HIV/AIDS in a serious way, because it is something which will come home. Let us take up the mantle and preach it as it has never been preached before, and run with it.” Job-Davis also reported the suggestions made by Tobago’s youth at a recent consultation on their concerns. She urged that a youth parliament be set up to give youth a voice. At the consultation she said youth were displeased with the implementation of universal secondary education without first ensuring they could read and write properly. “It is resulting in high drop out rates, children unable to cope, and frustration.” The youth were also upset, she said, that corporal punishment had been removed without an apt replacement.

“Young people said to us that adult parents are afraid of youths.”  The youth also said parents no longer taught them about life, culture and heritage. They said parents need to upgrade their own educational skills. Uneducated parents lead  to uneducated children.” The youth lamented parents leaving child-rearing up to the teachers. They also want more channels for their energies.” Job-Davis said,   according to the youth, they had an identity crisis and were unsure of their values. “In some ways these children are lost.”