THE EDITOR: Most mornings I switch between stations like Slam, Next and Red to hear the ole talk that we Trinis love. The way I figure it, the work day is going to be hard enough so let me get my kicks in front before things get serious.
On April 4 I turned to Red 96.7 and stopped because the young woman who cohosts the morning show was making an impassioned plea to young men and women to stop killing each other and engage in more productive activities.
Her emotion grabbed me and I paused to listen. It unfortunately isn't the usual commentary I usually hear from that morning show but hopefully her presence will improve the lack of information the other host typically displays.
The hosts then opened the lines to callers and I was shocked by what I heard. The young man who cohosts the show had asked listeners what they thought about the recent comments by National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds that movies and pornography contributed to our violent crime statistics and a young man who seemed to be a regular caller gave his opinion.
The caller put forward the position that it wasn't movies but idleness that contributed to crimes like rape (his specific example) because if a young man had nothing to do, he would see rape as an activity to be engaged in. He then said the Government had to make programmes available to take idle youths and make them productive.
First of all, there is nothing that justifies rape.
To hear a young man put forward that argument scares me as a father of a daughter. To not hear either host immediately put the caller in his place is even more frightening. That was where they failed in their responsibility to their listeners. Not condemning the statement could be seen as endorsing it as a valid opinion. Shame!
The comment about a lack of programmes made me want to quickly check what was actually available so I had a look at the Facebook pages of the Ministries of Youth Development and Sport and Community Development. That took less than ten minutes and here's what I found:
Sport and Community Development: Pink Reign Campaign for young women, Best Village Competition, Community Mediation Programmes, MpowerTT Programme, April Pools Swimming Programme, Community Education Skills Training Programmes, etc. Not included are all the programmes the ministry also supports through financial assistance.
Youth Development: Youth Career and Education Caravan, StepTT, ALLSET, CRISP, DRIVE, Project Trending, Youth Agricultural Homestead Programme, 40 Under 40 Programme, Youth Shade House Project, Civilian Conservation Corps, etc.
I took the time to look and list those programmes to show that if anyone really wanted to engage in productive activity there are many options available. They just have to take a couple of minutes to look. Unfortunately, too many people are content to justify their own laziness by using the old standard 'the Government not doing anything for me' - while they do nothing for themselves.
I
