The Trinidad and To­ba­go Coun­cil of Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es is dis­heart­ened by the high crime rate and they're call­ing on politi­cians and cit­i­zens to work to­geth­er. They are al­so ap­peal­ing to cit­i­zens to re­turn to tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly val­ues as taught by the Bible.

Say­ing cit­i­zens were liv­ing in fear, the coun­cil said peo­ple must come to­geth­er as "the time to push back is now."

The coun­cil said that crime—a spir­i­tu­al prob­lem and glob­al epi­dem­ic as a re­sult of hu­man na­ture—can be brought un­der con­trol by spend­ing time in prayer and fast­ing.

The coun­cil said the prob­lem that we face "is be­yond nat­ur­al or mere hu­man in­ter­ven­tion." They are call­ing on church­es to con­tin­ue to pray and fast through­out the year.

"This can­not be ac­com­plished with­out the in­put of all cit­i­zens. Your part may ap­pear to be in­signif­i­cant or un­nec­es­sary, but it might be the miss­ing piece of the puz­zle we need in form­ing the beau­ti­ful coun­try we pray and long for. We of­ten look to oth­ers for so­lu­tions, but work­ing syn­er­gis­ti­cal­ly we can ac­com­plish more, with greater speed and com­fort.

"Crime is a so­ci­etal prob­lem and it can on­ly be dealt with through team­work. The fam­i­ly, the church, the school, the po­lice, the ath­lete, the doc­tor, the maxi taxi dri­ver, the cat­a­logue is end­less; we must all work to­geth­er to elim­i­nate fear and mis­trust in so­ci­ety.

"We can­not put the blame sole­ly on the Gov­ern­ment, for if gov­ern­ments could solve crime it would have been solved al­ready."

Not­ing that suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have "ad­vanced sev­er­al strate­gies in an at­tempt to cir­cum­vent the alarm­ing es­ca­la­tion of crime," the coun­cil said to be ef­fec­tive, the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion must work hand in hand with the Op­po­si­tion and oth­er po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties to de­vel­op a wide range of ideas.

The coun­cil is ap­peal­ing to peo­ple to im­prove their re­la­tion­ships with one an­oth­er.

"Life is all about re­la­tion­ships, and the most im­por­tant re­la­tion­ships are fam­i­ly re­la­tion­ships. In fact, God in his wis­dom cre­at­ed the fam­i­ly as the bedrock of so­ci­ety. When the fam­i­ly falls apart, it af­fects the well-be­ing of so­ci­ety.

"In ef­fect, the evils of so­ci­ety are symp­to­matic of the de­cline in fam­i­ly val­ues. Virtues and val­ues taught in the home eas­i­ly be­come the streams of dis­ci­pline in the wider so­ci­ety.

"Every­one must stop and re-ex­am­ine what is tak­ing place in the home. We must take a look at the val­ues be­ing taught.

The coun­cil said peo­ple must stop blam­ing the Gov­ern­ment, church or oth­ers for the spate of law­less­ness.

"We can min­imise the de­bil­i­tat­ing in­crease in crime when we stop blam­ing Gov­ern­ment, the church or some­one else for its cause. I must ask my­self what my con­tri­bu­tions to the cause of crime are. Am I a part of the prob­lem or so­lu­tion?"