Yvonne Ba­boolal

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er's mil­lion-dol­lar Hoop of Life bas­ket­ball com­pe­ti­tion can, back­fire and cause more crime in high-risk com­mu­ni­ties. This was the con­cern ex­pressed by some res­i­dents af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar launched the com­pe­ti­tion at Beetham Gar­dens and Mara­bel­la on Sat­ur­day with sur­prise guest, re­tired in­ter­na­tion­al bas­ket­ball leg­end, Dr Shaquille O'Neal.

First prize in the com­pe­ti­tion is $1 mil­lion, the sec­ond is $500,000 and the third is $250,000. "You think that is just go­ing to play out nor­mal? A mil­lion dol­lars for a team in a com­mu­ni­ty bas­ket­ball com­pe­ti­tion?" one res­i­dent asked. "This could cause ri­val­ry. These are the com­mu­ni­ties with the most guns. These fel­las won't be just play­ing sports. Peo­ple will be threat­ened to play bad and lose the game," the res­i­dent said.

The source fur­ther said that in the Gov­ern­ment un­em­ploy­ment re­lief pro­grammes, like Colour Me Or­ange, some young men use the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pool their mon­ey and buy guns and drugs. Wayne Jor­dan, teacher and com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist in Beetham Gar­dens, who was mas­ter of cer­e­monies at the launch of the com­pe­ti­tion, dis­missed the idea.

"That's the kind of stig­ma they at­tach to these ar­eas. "Each play­er would be giv­en a stipend but I don't know how much. That (threat­en­ing play­ers to play bad) would not hap­pen. "You would not be able to bring a bas­ket­ball play­er from Pic­ton. That was long time, when there were no bor­der­lines. "The pro­gramme will work. It will make a dif­fer­ence.

"There are a lot of young peo­ple who are un­em­ployed who have a lot of tal­ent," Jor­dan said. Not­ing that it's go­ing to take hard work to get war­ring com­mu­ni­ties to play bas­ket­ball with each oth­er, Jor­dan said his con­cern is the venues. He said a lot of young men can­not leave the area be­cause of the bor­der­lines es­tab­lished by war­ring gangs in the com­mu­ni­ties.

He said: "The ob­jec­tive is to get rid of the bor­der­lines. "We're hop­ing peo­ple will re­al­ly come to­geth­er and play bas­ket­ball. Let's try. That's what we want. Peace." Gre­go­ry Sloane-Seale of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry's Cit­i­zens Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­gramme (CSP), said he is not ful­ly aware of the de­tails of the Hoop of Life com­pe­ti­tion. "I am sure the CSP will be brought in­to the mix in the near fu­ture."

Sloane-Seale said the CSP works in 22 at-risk com­mu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing Beetham Gar­dens and col­lab­o­rates with 32 non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the Laven­tille-based Love Un­til Foun­da­tion, to de­vel­op sus­tain­able ap­proach­es to crime pre­ven­tion. "We have seen a 55 per cent re­duc­tion in homi­cides in the com­mu­ni­ties. When we start­ed in some ar­eas, there were ten and 11 mur­ders. With­in two years, there was none."

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­vis­er to the PM, Capt Gary Grif­fith, said the Hoop of Life com­pe­ti­tion is a sec­ondary crime-pre­ven­tion pro­gramme. He said such ini­tia­tives have been suc­cess­ful world­wide and the aim is to di­vert the en­er­gies of in­di­vid­u­als from crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties to more pos­i­tive, char­ac­ter-build­ing ex­er­cis­es.