Shas­tri Boodan

Out­spo­ken Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist min­is­ter Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin is call­ing for casi­nos to be shut­down. Dot­tin, who spoke at a town meet­ing on crime host­ed by Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly at the Fe­lic­i­ty Hin­du School on Wednes­day, de­scribed casi­nos as the “great­est mon­ey laun­der­ing ma­chine you have in the world.”

“A casi­no is a sign of moral deca­dence and dis­in­te­gra­tion in so­ci­ety. I am call­ing for a to­tal shut­down,” he said.

He al­so called for the ar­rest of the per­sons im­port­ing il­le­gal drugs in­to T&T and ap­pealed to po­lit­i­cal par­ties not to ac­cept mon­ey from drug deal­ers. “Gov­ern­ments in this coun­try have been tools of what I called the nar­co-oli­garchy. Pan­day spoke about the par­a­sitic oli­garchy, I am talk­ing about the nar­cot­ic par­a­sitic oli­garchy be­cause many of those who own the com­mand­ing heights of the econ­o­my are those who are bring­ing in the drugs,” he said.

Dot­tin de­scribed T&T as a “bla­tant­ly, blink­ing­ly cor­rupt so­ci­ety” with cor­rup­tion at all lev­els in the gov­ern­ment ser­vice. He said lead­ers should be moral icons who are drug and al­co­hol free.

“Those who as­pire for the high­est po­si­tions in the land must be role mod­els for our young peo­ple. They must be the hus­bands of one wife and the wife of one hus­band. They have to be, they have to set an ex­am­ple for the young peo­ple,” he said

He re­called the mur­der of Aruna De­osaran who along with her hus­band was mur­dered in Ju­ly last year four build­ings away from the Moru­ga Po­lice Sta­tion. He said the killer re­mains at large and pro­tect­ed by the law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties.

Dot­tin said any pro­gramme tar­get­ing crime must in­volve the en­tire fam­i­ly and par­ents must set an ex­am­ple by be­ing drug and sub­stance free. He al­so urged fa­thers to live up to their role.

“Let me tell men, you should not be a sperm fire of­fi­cers, spray­ing your sperm all over the place . . .you must mar­ry a woman you love and you must have re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” he ad­vised.

The pas­tor al­so told the gath­er­ing: “I know a girl right now, she has had three men in her life and she has chil­dren for each of them and each man is an as­sas­sin. That tells you that a ma­jor fo­cus in the fight against crime has got to be the fam­i­ly. There are some homes where moth­ers, sin­gle par­ents are liv­ing in jail. They are the pris­on­ers and their son is the com­mis­sion­er of prison in that home.”

Dot­tin said he re­cent­ly vis­it­ed a school where a “frail East In­di­an prin­ci­pal” asked for his help to deal with struc­tured drug traf­fick­ing rings op­er­at­ing in two schools. He ap­pealed to re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions to de­vel­op in place pro­grammes to pre­vent young peo­ple from falling prey to crim­i­nal gangs.

“I fail to un­der­stand how we have a Min­istry of Youth and Na­tion­al Ser­vice and noth­ing is hap­pen­ing with na­tion­al ser­vice,”he said.

“The biggest mis­take was the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na which has con­tributed to the grow­ing crime rate.”