The state of emer­gency (SoE) was im­ple­ment­ed on Au­gust 21 and con­tin­ues to date. The coun­try was "un­der siege" from the rogue el­e­ments and the Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed that tak­ing away the rights of cit­i­zens was the on­ly way to al­le­vi­ate the prob­lem. It has been more than two months now and I do not feel a bit safer. Crim­i­nals nev­er had any re­gard for the law be­fore the SoE and it is ev­i­dent that they still do not.How can I feel safer when we still have ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,000 po­lice of­fi­cers charged with main-tain­ing law and or­der in a coun­try of well over 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple, par­ents who are not train­ing their chil­dren, schools that do not have the nec­es­sary re­sources to churn out pro­duc­tive men and women of to­mor­row, and re­li­gion­ists who con­tin­ue to com­pro­mise and down- play the grave im­por­tance of re­li­gion?

Our suf­fer­ing econ­o­my that could not sus­tain a salary in­crease of over five per cent for work­ers has now caused night jobs to come to a vir­tu­al end. Derek Chin an­nounced the clo­sure of his Wok Hay restau­rant at Price Plaza, Ch­agua­nas, due to the loss­es be­ing in­curred.This begs the ques­tion: see­ing that a big fran­chis­er as Chin (own­er of Movi­eTowne and Ru­by Tues­day) is feel­ing the pinch of the SoE, won't the small­er busi­ness own­ers al­so?To make mat­ters a worse, an at­tor­ney in Princes Town not­ed in Sep­tem­ber that it will cost tax­pay­ers in the vicin­i­ty of $60 mil­lion to com­pen­sate those peo­ple de­tained and set free due to rea­sons like "in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence."There are re­sound­ing calls for the im­me­di­ate ces­sa­tion of the SoE. Mur­ders, rapes, thefts and the like still con­tin­ue to reign.A com­pre­hen­sive so­lu­tion to this na­tion's ills lies in the hands of com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment lead­ers and the stake­hold­ers of the in­sti­tu­tions of re­li­gion, ed­u­ca­tion and the fam­i­ly.These in­sti­tu­tions are priv­i­leged in shap­ing and mold­ing the mind of the child as he grows in­to his teenage years and then adult­hood. A so­cial prob­lem must be com­bat­ed with so­cial so­lu­tions. Crime starts in the mind and as such the mind needs prop­er mold­ing.

An­der­son Alex­is

New Grant