GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

No place is con­sid­ered safe in T&T, as crime seems to be on the minds of every­one de­spite what ap­pears to be the best ef­forts of law en­force­ment, stake­hold­ers and many cit­i­zens.

So says Di­anne Joseph, chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer of the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League of T&T, as the or­gan­i­sa­tion added its voice to the grow­ing con­cern of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place in the coun­try.

“And, our mem­bers are cor­rect, to look to­wards the gov­er­nors of our coun­try for so­lu­tions or as some may say com­fort. But from a re­al-life per­spec­tive, our gov­er­nors may not have all the an­swers. In some cas­es, we have crime in the home, we have it on the streets, we have it at our work­places and every­where. There­fore, it may ap­pear im­prac­ti­cal to treat with all of the is­sues all of the times,” Joseph told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

Re­it­er­at­ing that it may be safe to say that every cit­i­zen is con­cerned about the pro­tec­tion of them­selves and their fam­i­lies, Joseph said gone are the days when a per­son could feel a sense of com­fort and ease up­on ar­riv­ing home from a hard day’s work.

“Now, it is fear on the in­side and fear on the out­side, due to the rob­beries, mur­ders, gang vi­o­lence, home in­va­sions, ex­tor­tion and many oth­er forms of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty,” she added.

Not­ing that there are vary­ing views about the prob­lem, Joseph said some at­tribute the cause of the crime scourge to par­ents and ad­vo­cate hold­ing par­ents ac­count­able for the breach­es of their chil­dren.

How­ev­er, she said, “Is this fair, when in some cas­es the par­ents are out work­ing to earn and an hon­est dol­lar to put food on the ta­ble, buy school books and uni­forms and to hon­est­ly take care of the chil­dren? On many oc­ca­sions, par­ents have gone be­yond the call to seek the best for their chil­dren, but they are not aware when the chil­dren get caught up with the wrong crowd that leads them in the wrong path.

“In oth­er cas­es, it may be be­cause of the neg­li­gence of the both par­ents, the ab­sence of the fa­ther or moth­er in the home.”

There­fore, Joseph said, hold­ing par­ents ac­count­able for the wrong­do­ing of their chil­dren would need much thought and con­sid­er­a­tion and must be done on a case-by-case ba­sis, not by putting every par­ent in­to the same pool. She said there must be a bal­ance in every sit­u­a­tion and eq­ui­ty must be the hall­mark of what is done.

It is im­por­tant, she said, the so­ci­ety must not lose sight of the fact that many adults and chil­dren would have al­ready been in fi­nan­cial dis­tress and this was ex­ac­er­bat­ed with the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic from 2020 to 2022.

Joseph ex­plained that many have not yet re­turned to full-time em­ploy­ment and while some may be back, they may not be at the same com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages, while oth­er may.

“This sce­nario has placed many of our mem­bers and cit­i­zens un­der on­go­ing dis­tress. It is there­fore nec­es­sary to mo­ti­vate chil­dren to at­tend school and to help them to un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate the val­ue of ed­u­ca­tion, now and in­to the fu­ture. If we fail as a so­ci­ety to do this, it may cre­ate fur­ther chal­lenges for our coun­try as a while,” she added.

From the per­spec­tive of the school sys­tem, Joseph said it is im­por­tant for the lead­er­ship to as­sess those who gen­uine­ly can­not cope with the aca­d­e­m­ic side but may be a very good prospect at pur­su­ing an area of trade.

In such cas­es, she rec­om­mend­ed to shift the fo­cus for those chil­dren in that area and coach them along this path, not­ing that in this way, they may be able to earn an hon­est in­come from the trade per­spec­tive while those aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in­clined will move on to oth­er jobs.

“Af­ter all, we need trades­men, au­to­mo­tive, me­chan­ics, tai­lors, dress-mak­ers, wood-work­ers, plumbers etc,” Joseph added.

More lay­offs in­crease stress lev­els

Fur­ther, she said un­em­ploy­ment and un­der­em­ploy­ment re­main a chal­lenge for var­i­ous rea­sons and the lat­est con­cern is that of news­pa­per re­ports about Stork Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices TT ad­vis­ing staff of its in­tend­ed phased shut-down which is like­ly to af­fect 389 work­ers.

“This is cause for fur­ther con­cern. This will add to the al­ready chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tion of fam­i­lies in dis­tress,” Joseph said, ad­vis­ing that the labour min­istry and so­cial ser­vices may have to take an ear­ly step to and of­fer ap­pro­pri­ate guid­ance and sup­port the af­fect­ed work­ers.

“We must al­so ask our­selves, will this sep­a­ra­tion cre­ate men­tal is­sues? Will there be do­mes­tic chal­lenges in the home where the bread­win­ner be­comes frus­trat­ed and ends up in do­mes­tic vi­o­lence? Will there be a risk to the em­ploy­ees who may have debt to in­sti­tu­tions for some prod­uct or ser­vice that may now cre­ate chal­lenges when they can­not re­pay?

She ques­tioned whether Stork’s planned shut­down woul­dresult in fur­ther crime or if any­one would turn to crime due to the vul­ner­a­ble state of los­ing their jobs.

“ There must be some form of ap­pro­pri­ate sup­port for these em­ploy­ees. This more­so, if we look at these 389 em­ploy­ees by an av­er­age house­hold of four per­sons, it means that a large num­ber of our mem­bers and cit­i­zens are left ex­posed to a type of stress and pain that on­ly they may be able to ex­plain. This must be ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion to shield this group any po­ten­tial dan­ger,” Joseph said.

From the na­tion­al per­spec­tive, she said, con­tin­u­ous stake­hold­er en­gage­ment may serve as a ve­hi­cle to ob­tain ideas for restor­ing peace and calm to the coun­try and to best guide those in au­thor­i­ty along this path.

Stat­ing that the an­swers are not in the minds of any one leader or in­di­vid­ual, Joseph said it may pos­si­bly be in the minds of the or­di­nary man who is ‘on the ground’ and may have ideas that may be work­able.

“It is there­fore, not too late for our gov­er­nors to em­brace in more di­rect ways the many stake­hold­ers who have been call­ing for fur­ther in­clu­sion.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go re­main a place where our mem­bers, in large part, will want to re­main and serve at var­i­ous lev­els. We must mo­ti­vate them to do so. If we fail, we may end up with brain drain as they will move to oth­er coun­tries that they feel safer, in­clud­ed or pro­tect­ed,” she added.

About STORK

Flu­or En­ter­prise Inc ac­quired STORK Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices T&T Ltd from the UK-based pri­vate eq­ui­ty firm Ar­le Cap­i­tal Part­ners in 2016.

By 2021, Flu­or de­cid­ed to ex­it main­te­nance ser­vices in the oil, gas and chem­i­cals mar­ket and to di­vest the glob­al STORK Group as part of its new strate­gic di­rec­tion.

Ini­tial­ly, Stork planned a “One Stork Sale,” but find­ing it un­fea­si­ble, it opt­ed in­stead to di­vest the re­gion­al com­po­nents of the glob­al busi­ness.