Michelle Loubon

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert says about 2,500 young men have lost their lives to vi­o­lence and gang war­fare dur­ing the past four years. He was mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion at A Case For Com­pul­so­ry Na­tion­al Ser­vice at City Hall, Knox Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. Its theme was Sav­ing Lives: Build­ing Com­mu­ni­ties. It was host­ed by Citadel Ltd. Philbert said, "We have lost about 2,500 young men over the last four years. The ceme­ter­ies are rich. We have young men who keep com­ing back be­fore the courts. We have to re­duce gang in­volve­ment. We have had to in­tro­duce a re­peat of­fend­ers pro­gramme to help them. When we look, we find they have failed the drug test, psy­cho­log­i­cal as­sess­ment and eval­u­a­tion."

While he laud­ed the large turnout of males at the event, he not­ed the ma­jor­i­ty of young men at risk, did not have a fa­ther fig­ure in their lives. "They don't know where there fa­ther is. They left school ear­ly. They dropped out," he said. Philbert reg­is­tered his angst at the dress code of some young men. "There are young men who can't pur­chase belts. You are ex­posed to half dirty un­der­wear on the main streets of T&T." Tat­tered sneak­ers, of­ten hang­ing on elec­tri­cal wires, were an­oth­er sore point, he not­ed.

"They hang them up. For some rea­son au­thor­i­ties, would not take it down," he added. Philbert said if T&T was se­ri­ous about na­tion-build­ing there should not be any par­ti­tion. Philbert made ref­er­ence to Dr Er­ic Williams' fa­mous quote from his 1962 In­de­pen­dence Day ad­dress - the fu­ture of the na­tion is in the school­bags, but Philbert said to­day, "The bags are car­ry­ing guns. "The school bags should have na­tion­al ser­vice. We have to do some­thing if we want the youth to go in the right di­rec­tion." He al­so made ref­er­ence to ca­lyp­son­ian El­la An­dall's clas­sic Miss­ing Gen­er­a­tion. "We have a miss­ing gen­er­a­tion. They have found us," Philbert said, but Philbert was care­ful to point out that na­tion­al ser­vice could not be foist­ed up­on the pop­u­la­tion.

See­ta­hal speaks

It was a point ar­tic­u­lat­ed by Guardian colum­nist and sen­a­tor Dana See­ta­hal SC. "There must be leg­is­la­tion," she said. Among the coun­tries she iden­ti­fied who had adopt­ed com­pul­so­ry ser­vice were Aus­tria, Mex­i­co, Greece and Turkey.