‘Put down guns, pick up skills’

NATIONAL SECURITY Minister Howard Chin Lee appealed to the elders in communities across Trinidad and Tobago to urge young people to put down guns and pick up skills instead. Addressing yesterday’s PNM Laventille/Morvant constituency conference at the Russell Latapy High School, Chin Lee lamented the myriad of influences within the society which “glamorise crime and gangsterism” and encourage the youths to believe that “crime pays.” The Minister said this was an element of the war against crime which persons in the community were better equipped to handle than the law enforcement agencies.  He declared that elders and persons of influence in the community must encourage the youth to “pick up a book instead of a gun” and learn proper, legitimate skills that will ensure that they have a bright future.

The Minister urged all communities in TT to “create a paradigm shift” to achieve this goal. Chin Lee said every time law enforcement officers hear about Laventille/Morvant “certain images are conjured up in our imagination, certain fears are brought to bear on our decision.”  However the Minister said the reality in Laventille/Morvant was there is a “minority who terrorise the majority” and this was one of the reasons why the Special Crime Unit and the Police-Army Inter-Agency Task Force were formed. He slammed individuals and groups in the society “who are bent on misleading the population” with “irresponsible information” and warned that “the irresponsible voices that we have leads to irresponsible actions.” Laventille East/Morvant MP Fitzgerald Hinds said it was untrue to say that the PNM never did anything to uplift the people of the constituency. Hinds said the most recent evidence of Government’s commitment to the people of Laventille/Morvant was the allocation of $21 million to convert the Old Rum Bond along the Eastern Main Road into a technical skills centre for the youths of Laventille/Morvant. Hinds declared that while Government “will not flinch” in its commitment to the national community, it could not on its own “provide the right attitudes” to take the country forward. He said this could only be achieved through a synergy between the State and the population and such a synergy would help TT to become a developed nation by 2020.