The fate of sev­er­al ma­jor youth in­ter­ven­tion pro­grammes—in­clud­ing the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps (CCC), the Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (Mi­LAT) Pro­gramme, and the Mil­i­tary-Led Youth Pro­gramme of Ap­pren­tice­ship and Re­ori­en­ta­tion Train­ing (MY­PART)—re­mains un­cer­tain, with Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Phillip Watts in­di­cat­ing a fi­nal de­ci­sion has yet to be made.

“I will be mak­ing a state­ment af­ter the Cab­i­net meet­ing on that,” Watts said in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia. “I’m still try­ing to delve in­to that to find out ex­act­ly what is hap­pen­ing with that pro­gramme.”

His com­ments come in the wake of trou­bling rev­e­la­tions from a se­nior of­fi­cial con­nect­ed to Mi­LAT and MY­PART, who dis­closed that the pro­grammes have ef­fec­tive­ly stalled due to se­ri­ous lo­gis­ti­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive short­com­ings. These in­clude crit­i­cal short­ages in ba­sic sup­plies, re­peat­ed de­lays in pro­gramme launch­es, bu­reau­crat­ic red tape, and the lack of suit­able fa­cil­i­ties.

The same of­fi­cial, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, con­firmed the con­tents of a con­fi­den­tial re­port dat­ed May 10, 2025. The re­port rec­om­mends that all three ini­tia­tives be trans­ferred back to the Min­istry of De­fence, re­vers­ing a 2020 de­ci­sion that placed them un­der the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice (MYDNS), then led by for­mer min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings.

Be­fore that shift, CCC had been un­der the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty since its in­cep­tion in 1993, pro­duc­ing over 30,000 grad­u­ates dur­ing its 27-year run. Mi­LAT sim­i­lar­ly op­er­at­ed un­der that min­istry from 2005 to 2020 and saw more than 1,000 par­tic­i­pants grad­u­ate.

“The rea­son they would have giv­en to move the pro­gramme to the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice was that pro­grammes would be bet­ter aligned with­in one min­istry. That was not our ex­pe­ri­ence. We were there. I don’t think that we were treat­ed with par­i­ty with the oth­er pro­grammes. So, in terms of CCC, I would agree that it would be moved,” the of­fi­cial said.

“In terms of Mi­LAT, Mi­LAT is more so mil­i­tary-led on a 24-hour ba­sis be­cause it’s a live-in pro­gramme. So that is a straight yes with Mi­LAT and MY­PART for those pro­grammes to be tran­si­tioned back to the Min­istry of De­fence,” he added.

Ac­cord­ing to the source, the CCC cy­cle sched­uled to be­gin on Jan­u­ary 14, 2025, has yet to com­mence, leav­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,100 as­sessed and in­ter­viewed trainees in lim­bo. He al­so re­vealed that 200 ap­pli­cants with­drew amid the un­cer­tain­ty, and five have since passed away. The pro­grammes, he ex­plained, were halt­ed pend­ing a gov­ern­ment-led as­sess­ment fo­cused on ef­fec­tive­ness, pro­cure­ment prac­tices, and struc­tur­al man­age­ment.

Mi­LAT, mean­while, has strug­gled with se­cur­ing food sup­plies so se­vere­ly that rough­ly 200 en­rolled trainees and cadets have had to re­main at home.

“We have a short­age of food. So we couldn’t keep them. So we had to send them home. And they are on the cusp of start­ing their ex­am­i­na­tions and are not be­ing able to be en­gaged by the teach­ers since the East­er break. That’s a recipe for dis­as­ter in terms of what we’re hop­ing to achieve aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in terms of their suc­cess,” the source said.

“Year one cadets have start­ed their in­duc­tion train­ing and have to be sent home in the mid­dle of in­duc­tion train­ing. That in­duc­tion train­ing is the crit­i­cal part of their ref­or­ma­tion that gets them ready and set­tled for the rest of the school year. We had to stop that. So it’s al­most like start­ing over when­ev­er they come back, be­cause, you know, it’s a num­ber of is­sues that they would have been break­ing out in terms of those im­prop­er be­hav­iours, be­fore we start back,” he added.

The May 10 re­port al­so in­di­cat­ed that many par­ents, frus­trat­ed with the pro­gramme de­lays and lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, have blamed for­mer min­is­ter Cum­mings.

Teach­ers and mil­i­tary staff have al­so re­port­ed­ly voiced long­stand­ing con­cerns about in­suf­fi­cient re­sources, with the of­fi­cial re­it­er­at­ing sup­port for re­lo­cat­ing the pro­grammes back un­der the Min­istry of De­fence.

“Al­though the pro­grammes have been mar­gin­al­ly suc­cess­ful, the pub­lic will see huge suc­cess, but we know what the po­ten­tial of these pro­grammes is if they are prop­er­ly re­sourced.”

He fur­ther de­scribed the ini­tia­tives as vi­tal tools in the fight against youth crime:

“The per­sons who, by and large, fu­el crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go are per­sons be­tween the ages of 14 to 30. Our pro­gramme caters for 16 to 25. If you look at the bell curves, that is the group that’s pro­vid­ing the largest num­bers in terms of per­sons who are deemed at risk. While our pro­gramme is not en­gag­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple, it’s en­gag­ing, in the case of CCC, around 1,000 per­sons per year. Do the mul­ti­ply ef­fect over five years, that’s 5,000 lives you could po­ten­tial­ly save if they’re cor­rect­ly en­gaged. Mi­LAT, 100 per­sons per year, but 100 per­sons per year en­gag­ing in aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing, keep­ing them 100% oc­cu­pied. These pro­grammes are ab­solute­ly need­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go space. There’s no Mi­LAT or MY­PART in To­ba­go.”

“We need to prop­er­ly re­source them. We al­so need to re­move the bu­reau­crat­ic en­cum­brances that are stop­ping the pro­gramme from thriv­ing. I’m not say­ing that the pro­gramme is per­fect and it doesn’t need to be as­sessed, but there are oth­er ways and many dif­fer­ent strate­gies that could have been used in terms of not shut­ting the pro­gramme down 100%, be­cause lives are at stake, lives are be­ing lost.”

The re­port al­so not­ed that MY­PART was re­as­signed to the Spe­cialised Youth Ser­vice Pro­gramme (SYSP) in De­cem­ber 2024. How­ev­er, that pro­gramme was nev­er launched due to a di­rec­tive from the for­mer min­is­ter re­quir­ing it to serve stu­dents ex­pelled from Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions. SYSP, in its orig­i­nal form, is in­tend­ed for Tech­ni­cal Vo­ca­tion­al stu­dents aim­ing for CVQ Lev­el 2 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

The CCC has al­so faced se­ri­ous in­fra­struc­tur­al set­backs. For the past two years, it has been op­er­at­ing from the VM­COTT build­ing af­ter its of­fi­cial head­quar­ters at 1 CCC Road, Beetham Gar­dens, was deemed struc­tural­ly un­sound, the re­port said.

When con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia, Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Phillip Watts said for now, no de­ci­sion has been fi­nalised on whether the pro­grammes will re­main un­der the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs.

“The Gazette didn’t come out to us yet, so we are not sure if it will stay with the Youth Min­istry or if it will go to an­oth­er min­istry. So, I wouldn’t be able to com­ment on that right now be­cause we are wait­ing to see what is stat­ed with us and what is not stat­ed with us.”

The min­is­ter did, how­ev­er, con­firm that he has been meet­ing with of­fi­cials to get a clear­er pic­ture of the chal­lenges fac­ing the ini­tia­tives. “I would have met with the pro­gramme di­rec­tor to find out what are the is­sues that those pro­grammes were fac­ing un­der him,” he said. “He would have briefed me on it. So I will make a state­ment.”

That of­fi­cial state­ment is ex­pect­ed to be de­liv­ered on Thurs­day, fol­low­ing Cab­i­net de­lib­er­a­tions.