Most young people want to do well – Trinidad Tribune

News

The Prime Minister and Ministry of Youth Development and National Service Foster Cummings greet participants at the Tucker Valley Shade House Project in Chaguaramas on August 15. – File photo by Roger Jacob

FOSTER CUMMINGS, Minister for Youth Development and National Service, responded to a recent UN report on young people seeking solace in criminal gangs. He said that the vast majority of young people seek improvement in productive pursuits, not in crime.

On September 5, Newsday published the findings of a recent report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) titled Caribbean Gangs: Drugs, Firearms and Gangs Networks in Jamaica, St Lucia, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago.

It said many gangs in the region emerged from “self-help” and “neighbourhood improvement” groups in low-income and informal settlements amid limited state presence. “Most gangs emerged in response to criminal opportunities and in circumstances of social and economic deprivation.”

The report also shows that criminal gangs are now targeting the social alienation of some young people.

“And while most gangs seek to generate profit for their leaders, they also play a role in creating a sense of belonging and identity among rank-and-file members.

“Gangs are overwhelmingly made up of younger men, often uneducated and unemployed, and deeply distrustful of government agencies. “Although often short and brutal, gang life offers money, respect, belonging, and access to intimate partners.”

Newsday was keen to hear from Cummings, given the role his department plays in youth development.

Cummings said: “Our mandate is really to work on the empowerment of youth, to engage them in productive activities and of course legal activities. So it is a drive for self-development.

“So we focus on creating opportunities that are available to all young people, even those who can’t afford them.”

He said the programs ultimately prepare young people for work or business.

“This way, once young people are productive and participate in the productive sector, they are less available for the criminal elements to recruit.

“I assume the criminal elements will target young people and other people who have a lot of free time, who don’t have a job or formal training for a career.”

Newsday wondered if there was a way to measure the extent to which programs positively impact young people’s lives over time.

Cummings said: “When we implement programmes, when we roll them out, the kind of response we get suggests that many young people – the majority of young people – want to work towards improving their condition.”

He stressed that this means they should commit themselves to the manufacturing sector and train themselves to develop a career path and thus become a successful person.

“That is the first step: the response we get from these young people.

“We also do our own monitoring evaluation to see what numbers we are hitting, what numbers we are influencing, and what they do after they receive our training, and that will determine what we are going to roll out in the future.

“The conclusion that we have come to is that of the thousands of young people that we have, there are significantly more young people who tend towards these kinds of productive activities than there are those who may tend towards a life of crime. It is significantly, significantly more.”

Cummings promised more attention to young people in the “not in employment education or training” (NEET) category. “They may be out of high school and not doing much with their lives. We’re putting some extra emphasis on that category.”

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Newsday questioned whether there were enough spots available in public youth training programs for the many applicants.

“It’s a whole-of-government approach. We’re doing a significant number of things with our agricultural programs, our training programs, our cultural exposure programs.

“We do quite a lot. We train people in all sorts of different trades in technical/vocational areas that haven’t been touched before – heavy equipment operation, crane operation, core agricultural operations, and so on.”

Cummings said other ministries were also training young people.

“The Department of Trade and Industry has three or four apprenticeship programs. They recently launched one for the yachting industry. They have one for the woodworking industry.

“The Ministry of Education. People don’t seem to pay attention to the fact that we have YTEPP, MIC, NESC, CARIRI.

“We also have the Costaat. We have programmes rolled out by the UTT and UWI. All these agencies also have training programmes for the youth.” He said the Ministry of Agriculture also has a number of training programmes

“All in all, the government is doing quite a bit.

“But ultimately, there also has to be work at a family level, and there has to be an individual desire to be the best.”