Rowley: Violence is a Feature of Modern Society

BARBADOS – TRINIDAD and Tobago Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley says violence in a society is a feature of the modern world.

He was speaking to reports in Barbados where he has gone to sign a memorandum of understanding for the potential discovery of hydrocarbons within the territories of Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados

Questioned about what advice he will give in dealing the rising crime problem in Barbados, Rowley said, “The peo­ple from TT will raise their eye­brows at you ask­ing me for ad­vice in crime-fight­ing. The on­ly thing I would say the lev­el of vi­o­lence in so­ci­ety is a fea­ture of the mod­ern world.”

He also revealed that a crime-fight­ing ex­pert will be brought in­to Trinidad and Tobago to dis­cuss crime and vi­o­lence as a pub­lic health is­sue.

Rowley said, “In our area, we have a num­ber of stim­u­lants of this vi­o­lence. We should be cog­nizant of that.

“We are now ac­cept­ing that it is some­thing we have to ad­dress on an on­go­ing ba­sis. It is not about lock­ing up peo­ple, shoot­ing crim­i­nals and in­car­cer­at­ing the pop­u­la­tion. There are deep­er is­sues in­volved that takes us to the source. It is not overnight so­lu­tions. We have been ex­tend­ing a lot of re­sources and ef­fort and hold­ing the line against the crim­i­nals.”

He said, “That is the fright­en­ing thing. The next gen­er­a­tion is (fu­elling crime). They don’t have a val­ue sys­tem or the val­ue of life. We are be­ing pen­e­trat­ed by our larg­er neigh­bours so the drugs and firearms trade is com­ing in­to our space and cre­at­ing prob­lems which we did not have 40 or 50 years ago. There is no tem­po­rary or quick fix sit­u­a­tion for crime.

“It is like an ex­ot­ic dis­ease that comes in­to an en­vi­ron­ment for plants and an­i­mals and once it is in the en­vi­ron­ment we have to face it. That is what we are fac­ing now. Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley just spoke about view­ing vi­o­lence as a pub­lic health is­sue that af­fects so many peo­ple. It is so fre­quent and we have to treat it as a pub­lic health is­sue.

“We are invit­ing an ex­pert in T&T to open a con­ver­sa­tion on this is­sue which is look­ing at crime and vi­o­lence as a pub­lic health is­sue. We have noth­ing in TT that we can of­fer you that is dif­fer­ent from what you are fac­ing here. We are all fac­ing the same thing.”