JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Stu­dents, par­ents and teach­ers at the Bel­mont Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School yes­ter­day marched around the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, to pro­mote peace and love.

While the march was not linked to the triple mur­der of 23-month-old Aki­ni Kafi, his fa­ther Aquil and his fa­ther’s friend An­tho­ny Wil­son, which took place a day be­fore, the school said the re­cent killings have im­pact­ed the school.

School prin­ci­pal Keisha King said she taught Wil­son while Kafi was a past stu­dent of Bel­mont Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, be­fore she taught there.

“I didn’t have much in­ter­ac­tion with the fa­ther of the de­ceased young child; how­ev­er, the teach­ers (at Bel­mont) would have stat­ed that he, be­ing a stu­dent, would have shown po­ten­tial.”

As for Wil­son, she said: “What I can re­call is based on ex­pe­ri­ence at Gloster Lodge Mora­vian School, he would have been a child who we would have cat­e­gorised as be­ing that of spe­cial needs, and I guess the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty would have fall­en on all of us—home, school and com­mu­ni­ty—to aid this young man in­to be­ing some­one in so­ci­ety that can con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly.”

King said the triple mur­der is not the on­ly in­ci­dent of gun vi­o­lence im­pact­ing the school.

One of her stan­dard three stu­dent’s moth­er, No­tifer Car­rie, was killed on Wednes­day in Princes Town.

There have been shoot­ings near the school, and Kevon Moses, who was killed out­side the Bel­mont Po­lice Sta­tion three years ago, was a dri­ver for some of the school chil­dren.

She said schools play a cru­cial role in fight­ing crime. Asked what schools can do to ad­dress crime, King said schools need re­sources.

“I would think if we had spe­cial ed per­sons in the schools, we have guid­ance coun­sel­lors, so­cial work­ers whose re­spon­si­bil­i­ties are to in­ves­ti­gate what’s hap­pen­ing in the home, the guid­ance of­fi­cers, they can pro­vide the nec­es­sary coun­selling. The spe­cial ed teach­ers, they can as­sist teach­ers so that we can use dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed in­struc­tions to in­struct our stu­dents, as well as the wider so­cial ser­vices in the coun­try to as­sist in this mat­ter.”

Chant­i­ng “We need love! We need peace” as they marched, the chil­dren said they want­ed to pro­mote love, not just in Bel­mont but in the coun­try.

Founder of Roots Foun­da­tion and com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Mti­ma Sol­wazi, who grew up with Kafi, said the killing of fa­ther and son and the killing of Kafi’s oth­er son, Zion Roberts, a year ago, is the ter­mi­na­tion of a gen­er­a­tion.

“An en­tire gen­er­a­tion was just cut short by the bul­let. Fa­ther and two sons. Who is car­ry­ing that Kafi name? And I want us, I say us, to pay at­ten­tion to that. We can­not be cut­ting down our gen­er­a­tions by the bul­lets.”

In re­sponse to claims by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der that the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO), which failed to at­tain Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors’ sup­port, may have pre­vent­ed the triple killing, Sol­wazi said that this is not true.

Sol­wazi called in­stead for the re­turn of the Cit­i­zens Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­gramme (CSP), which he said was stopped un­der the Kei­th Row­ley-led gov­ern­ment.

CSP, which start­ed un­der the Patrick Man­ning-led gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ed Project Rea­son, which saw a re­duc­tion in gang vi­o­lence in East Port-of-Spain and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

He added that the pro­gramme was ex­pand­ed dur­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s first stint be­tween 2010 and 2015.

“We need the Cit­i­zen Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­gramme to come back. It worked. The na­tion can tell you that, it worked. Why stop some­thing that’s work­ing? To try to recre­ate some­thing else that we don’t know, if it will work. We’re talk­ing ZOSO? Let’s talk CSP. Less let­ters, more ef­fec­tive.”

Pres­i­dent of the school’s Par­ent/Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion, Nigel Sealey, said par­ents must be re­spon­si­ble “for our chil­dren and make sure our chil­dren grow up in a cer­tain way.”

He added: “Noth­ing will hap­pen overnight. So one of the best ways of do­ing it is hav­ing small events like this, where par­ents come to­geth­er, help their teach­ers, of course, and get the chil­dren in­volved. The chil­dren may be too young to un­der­stand from a holis­tic lev­el, but once they are in­volved, they will be im­mersed in the ac­tiv­i­ty, and by ex­ten­sion, the pos­i­tiv­i­ty will grow, and they will, in turn, car­ry on this way of think­ing, and by ex­ten­sion, change the cul­ture.”