THE Prime Minister has made a clarion call to the country's parents to take their roles and responsibilities to properly nurture and train their children away from delinquency, violence and anti-social behaviour.

Speaking at the PNM public meeting on Thursday night at the Barataria Community Centre, Dr Rowley said, "I want to appeal to parents in this land that is becoming faster and faster a wider killing field, I want to let you know parents, you have the fundamental responsibility and when you see a child behaving in a particular way, the question must be asked, where are or where is a parent?

"There are too many parents in this country who are not paying attention to their children sufficiently. Leaving it up to the teachers to work miracle. Leaving them to the Government and the police."

Saying old talk is cheap, Rowley asked what can the police do but to act after a crime is committed, "when you (the parent) turned a blind eye to it (in the first place)."

He said things have gotten so bad that parents are joining in the violence in support of their delinquent child, even going into schools to fight with another parent's child.

Rowley said Government cannot and will not be held responsible for this.

"I am saying the Government is not taking that responsibility, the government is saying to you, the first responsibility as a father or a mother, an uncle, an aunt, a brother, a sister, a neigbour, the first responsibility is yours!"

Earlier in the meeting, Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly said parents have a critical role to play in shaping the minds of children.

The minister declared, “like charity, discipline also begins at home!”

She added that a teacher cannot – no matter how hard they try – fix what a parent allowed to become broken over the course of many years.

She raised the importance of the input of parents when speaking on the issue of violence and indiscipline by students inside and outside of schools.

The St Ann’s East MP said while the public remains enraptured with viral videos and other social media posts, showing fights and indiscipline in and outside of schools, the fact is, out of a national school population of over 200,000, a mere handful of students are actually engaging in deviant behaviour.

She however stressed that she was not seeking to trivialize the issue of school violence and indiscipline, when saying it was a handful of students behaving in a deviant manner.

The minister said the covid19 pandemic lockdown, which saw schools shuttered for two years, played a major role in the violence and indiscipline being witnessed in the education system.

“Covid exacerbated the situation because students lost the discipline of being in a classroom (and) some of them haven’t regained it as yet.

“Students have lost the ability to be tolerant of each other, they were home for two years eh. Cyber-bullying started to impact in-school life in that fights were taking place in schools among students over cyber-bullying.”

She spoke of students traumatised by losing l