STO­RIES BY Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day an­nounced that he had set up a Com­mu­ni­ty Re­cov­ery Pro­gramme team—aimed at good or­der—to help rec­on­cile dif­fer­ences with­in trou­bled com­mu­ni­ties who were in­volved in protests ear­li­er this week. He said he saw it as an ap­pendage to the Re­cov­ery (Roadmap) pro­gramme.

“It’s re­cov­ery we’re aim­ing for,” Row­ley said at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, as he said psy­chol­o­gist An­tho­ny Watkins would head the team.

He said Watkins, who holds a BA in psy­chol­o­gy, had spent his life in psy­cho-so­cial, psy­chi­atric as­sess­ment and men­tal health cor­rec­tion­al work.

Al­so on the team are ra­dio an­nounc­er Hans des Vi­gnes, Cur­tis Tou­s­saint, Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty di­rec­tor Nico­la Har­vey, Ako­sua Ed­wards and for­mer na­tion­al foot­ball coach Ja­mal Shabazz. The team will be free to co-opt peo­ple from com­mu­ni­ties and will de­sign the way for­ward, he said.

Row­ley not­ed that an at­tempt was made to have a plan for in­ner-city youth in 2004 but it was halt­ed by the UNC’s Wade Mark and oth­ers claimed it favoured some.

He added, “I will not be dis­suad­ed to change course from this (Re­cov­ery plan) by any­one who feels it has to do with race, re­li­gion or ge­og­ra­phy. This has to do with peace safe­ty and good or­der,” Row­ley said.

“I’m hop­ing the re­sponse from the Gov­ern­ment to the peo­ple who are hurt­ing—all of them—would be one of con­cil­i­a­tion. We heard you and we’re pre­pared to take ac­tion...to­day isn’t a good day, but let us hope as we bury the dead which came about from our gen­er­al short­com­ings. We’ll re­solve to make to­mor­row a bet­ter day, not on­ly for our­selves but al­so for those who live in com­mu­ni­ties like these.”

He added, “And to those who feel this is an op­por­tu­ni­ty (in) that, you will be dis­cour­aged...we move on from there.”

Ad­dress­ing the task ahead on CNC3 last evening, Watkins said one of the big chal­lenges for the team will be set­ting aside their own as­sump­tions about things.

“How are we to put some of those things on silent?” Watkins asked just hours af­ter ac­cept­ing the as­sign­ment, not­ing they would al­so have to “learn one an­oth­er as a team, then be­gin to reach out and start the process of lis­ten­ing.”

The team has been man­dat­ed to eval­u­ate and de­sign a path for the way for­ward for com­mu­ni­ties in need, start­ing in east Port-of-Spain and Watkins said he didn’t hes­i­tate to ac­cept the chal­lenge.

“When the call came, for me it was a yes,” he said, al­though he did con­sult with those close to him.

Not­ing that some of the lan­guage over the past few days had on­ly made mat­ter worse, Watkins added: “We have to let some of the pres­sure and ten­sion come out of the space.”

Watkins, CEO and prin­ci­pal con­sul­tant of Odyssey Con­sult­Inc Lim­it­ed, es­tab­lished his con­sul­tan­cy firm in the ear­ly 1990s and has since been ac­tive­ly in­volved in pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives, work­ing ex­ten­sive­ly across the re­gion with ma­jor com­pa­nies and busi­ness lead­ers. His ar­eas of spe­cial­i­sa­tion in­clude lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment, or­gan­i­sa­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion and change, team de­vel­op­ment, ca­reer coach­ing and process fa­cil­i­ta­tion.