KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

PDP po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke is call­ing on Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine to apol­o­gise to To­ba­go moth­ers for blam­ing them for the is­land’s in­creas­ing crime rate.

At a Di­vali func­tion on Sat­ur­day, Au­gus­tine stat­ed that moth­ers have been fail­ing to hold their sons ac­count­able for wrong­do­ing, say­ing they are ben­e­fit­ting from their crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. To­ba­go has seen an un­prece­dent­ed rise in crime, with 25 mur­ders for the year so far. The pre­vi­ous high­est mur­der toll was 14. 

Yes­ter­day, Duke con­demned Au­gus­tine’s re­marks as in­ap­pro­pri­ate for a cel­e­bra­tion meant to fo­cus on light over dark­ness. He has de­mand­ed that Au­gus­tine ei­ther apol­o­gise pub­licly or re­sign.

“I say un­to you, Far­ley Au­gus­tine, apol­o­gise to moth­ers for pay­ing them late. And two, apol­o­gise to moth­ers and their chil­dren for paint­ing them a dark and ug­ly pic­ture of them­selves,” Duke said at a me­dia con­fer­ence in Scar­bor­ough yes­ter­day.

The late pay­ment Duke re­ferred to stemmed from a re­lease by the Di­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Youth De­vel­op­ment and Sport, which apol­o­gised to Cepep work­ers for not pay­ing them on Oc­to­ber 15, promis­ing in­stead to pay them by the 22.

As he re­turned to the is­sue of Au­gus­tine’s broad-brush re­marks against moth­ers, the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots leader said, “He at­tacked their sons. Sons have to grow to be­come men of our so­ci­ety, the young lead­ers of our so­ci­ety. He at­tacks them! He at­tacks them! He’s say­ing here that moth­ers are ir­re­spon­si­ble. They do not take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when deal­ing with their sons as if they are pro­tect­ing them. But every moth­er has to pro­tect her son. You do not have any ev­i­dence of what you are say­ing, and if you do, why not take it to the po­lice?”

Duke stat­ed that his moth­er nev­er raised a crim­i­nal, and then told Au­gus­tine, “I’m cer­tain your moth­er, your de­ceased moth­er, did not raise any crim­i­nal.”

Min­is­ter of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy, who is al­so the MP for To­ba­go East, has al­so dis­agreed with Au­gus­tine’s stance. She said in a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day that the in­crease in crime rates can­not be at­trib­uted sole­ly to ma­ter­nal in­flu­ences. She said Au­gus­tine’s view fails to con­sid­er the broad­er pic­ture.

“It is im­por­tant to recog­nise the sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions of fa­thers, grand­par­ents, aunts, un­cles, and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers,” she said, “The adage ‘it takes a vil­lage to raise a child’ high­lights the col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort in­volved in a child’s up­bring­ing, where­in many in­di­vid­u­als play a role in their de­vel­op­ment. When chil­dren suc­ceed, it is of­ten a re­flec­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty’s sup­port, demon­strat­ing that pos­i­tive out­comes arise from a col­lec­tive en­vi­ron­ment.”

Web­ster-Roy stat­ed that rather than plac­ing blame ex­clu­sive­ly on moth­ers, there is a need to ex­am­ine the col­lec­tive fail­ure with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, where var­i­ous stake­hold­ers may have made poor choic­es or ne­glect­ed their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in nur­tur­ing and guid­ing the youth. She al­so point­ed to changes in fam­i­ly struc­tures and com­mu­ni­ty sup­port sys­tems.

Point­ing to the To­ba­go say­ing, “Not same day green bush fall in wa­ter it does rot­ten,” Web­ster-Roy said, “The con­se­quences of ne­glect­ing our re­spon­si­bil­i­ties can take time to man­i­fest, but they even­tu­al­ly re­quire our at­ten­tion.”

And, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has called on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, and the THA Chief Sec­re­tary to take full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the crime sit­u­a­tion. Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Grif­fith in­sist­ed that curb­ing crime falls on the shoul­ders of those in au­thor­i­ty.

“They will nev­er look in the mir­ror and un­der­stand that there are con­tribut­ing fac­tors. But the cat­a­lyst for crime re­duc­tion has al­ways been the im­ple­men­ta­tion of State poli­cies,” Grif­fith said.

On­ly last week, Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said the pub­lic had to shoul­der some blame for the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion.