By Sue-Ann Wayow
TO deter youths from the illicit drug trade, a new programme is to be launched in five areas.
“Liming with a purpose” – Engaging to be informed, educated and empowered on the issues of drug control, will begin next month and will continue until May 2024.
The programme is the collaboration of the Ministry of National Security and the National Drug Council of Trinidad and Tobago.
National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds gave some details about the programme as he addressed the nation on the occasion of the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking 2023 observed on Monday.
He said, “This projects which targets young people between the ages of 16 and 25 is in sync with the United Nation’s call to action to empower young people and communities to prevent drug use and addiction.”
Through the project, young persons will be provided with a platform to be engaged and to become positive activists in their communities and amongst their peers.
It will involve five communities: Chaguanas, St Joseph, Sangre Grande, Laventille and Bethel, Tobago
Hinds said, “Throughout this period, the NDC and other key stakeholders will collaborate with the youth providing opportunities for them to be a major part of the decision-making in developing interventions that can assist to empowering communities to do better and to be better in relation to drug control.”
The minister said drug abuse and illicit trafficking was a global problem and it was only through corporation and coordination that a breakthrough can be made.
This year’s theme is “People first, stop stigma and discrimination, strengthen prevention.”
“In this, the Ministry of National Security seeks to put people first by empowering young people and communities to address drug control,” Hinds said.
He said, “Organised crime has professionalised production and trafficking. It has made its transnational, generating huge income streams from drug trafficking and extortion and it has made the criminal networks powerful players in a number of our communities, in our cities and the major towns in our islands across the Caribbean region.”
