Shas­tri Boodan

Po­lice are aim­ing to have mem­bers of their Youth Clubs re­cruit­ed in­to the Ser­vice.

This an­nounce­ment came from As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (act­ing) Col­lis Hazel who spoke at the open­ing of the Char­lot­teville, To­ba­go Po­lice Youth Club’s new skills fa­cil­i­ties at Post Of­fice Street, Char­lot­teville yes­ter­day.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Hazel said it was part of the strate­gic plan of the Po­lice Youth Club (PYC) to get the youths to join the Po­lice Ser­vice.

“It is our in­ten­tion to en­cour­age them to join the Po­lice Ser­vice and there­fore this would be a suit­able place where we can em­bark on our re­cruit­ment dri­ve en­sur­ing some of our youth club mem­bers are po­lice of­fi­cers. We would be en­deav­our­ing our best to mould and shape the char­ac­ter of these young ones so that they can join the TTPS.”

Hazel called on par­ents to get their chil­dren in­volved in clubs and oth­er rep­utable or­gan­i­sa­tions or risk their off­spring join­ing a gang or crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion.

He said there are sev­er­al gangs in T&T that are tak­ing their toll on so­ci­ety. “Every ef­fort to en­sure that we have young peo­ple join a group and not a gang is what we are fo­cus­ing on. The gang cul­ture has brought a lot of crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty with­in T&T’s space and there­fore any op­por­tu­ni­ty in which we can al­low young peo­ple to join groups in trans­form­ing their lives and the liveli­hoods of our young ones is what we in the TTPS would be fo­cus­ing on.”

When asked about the ris­ing crime in To­ba­go, Hazel said is­sues would be ad­dressed by the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the TTPS and as­sured that the TTPS was do­ing its job in keep­ing the sis­ter isle safe.

Tobago East MP Ayana Webster-Roy

SHASTRI BOODAN

To­ba­go East MP Ayana Web­ster-Roy said the num­bers for do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and abuse in To­ba­go are still too high.

“Even though the num­bers may ap­pear to be small, our in­stances of child abuse are too high. Our in­stances of Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence, Fam­i­ly Vi­o­lence are too high. Let us cre­ate a new mind­set, one that adopts a ze­ro-tol­er­ance at­ti­tude to­wards vi­o­lence,” she said.

Web­ster-Roy urged the PYC to cre­ate a new lev­el of think­ing that would steer peo­ple away from vi­o­lence.

“I en­cour­age you to sow good seeds in­to the young peo­ple of this com­mu­ni­ty so that when we are look­ing at da­ta on the vi­o­lence Char­lot­teville would not be one of the com­mu­ni­ties.”

Web­ster-Roy called on mem­bers of the PYC to think out­side the box and look be­yond the tra­di­tion­al skills as they seek to em­pow­er them­selves.

She said con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to train­ing in In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy so PYC mem­bers could go on to de­vel­op com­put­er-based ap­pli­ca­tions.

“We are mov­ing to­wards a so­ci­ety that is more dig­i­tal, con­sid­er train­ing our young peo­ple in cod­ing so that we could be the ones to de­vel­op apps, come to To­ba­go East to get the apps.”

Web­ster-Roy said this would give the area pri­or­i­ty when­ev­er the gov­ern­ment is look­ing to iden­ti­fy ar­eas for dig­i­tal de­vel­op­ment.

Pres­i­dent of the Char­lot­teville PYC, Verzel David, said the club was found­ed in Oc­to­ber 1996 and re­launched in 2013 as a com­mu­ni­ty al­ter­na­tive to neg­a­tive lifestyles.

David said the PYC Skills Cen­tre aims to pro­vide train­ing for peo­ple be­tween the ages of 12 and 29 with the aim of de­vel­op­ing self-suf­fi­cient peo­ple.

The build­ing was re­fur­bished with a grant from the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion and as­sis­tance from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

Members of the Charlotteville Police Youth Club performs on the African drums during the opening of the Charlotteville, Tobago Police Youth Club’s new skills facilities at Post Office Street, Charlotteville, Tobago yesterday.

SHASTRI BOODAN

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