New Year, old woes

Last night, thousands of citizens would have made New Year’s resolutions to guide them to a more prosperous 2023.

Some of them may even be the elected leaders and captains of industry whose decisions and actions have an oversized impact on the sustainability of TT.

Top their lists should be a holistic, whole-of-country response to crime.

Crime as measured by murders, crossed 600 killings for 2022 days ago.

Murders in this country steadily rose between 2014 and 2019, peaking at 536 that year before dropping to 393 and 448 over the first two years of covid19 restrictions.

Between 1995 and 2000, an average of 128 murders occurred each year.

Efforts to clamp down on crime have proven as effective as catching river fish by hand and social engagements haven’t been given the fuel that they need.

What’s needed is a more integrated approach to the growth of gang culture, engaging with at-risk children to ensure that they have better options than joining gangs.

Remediation and restorative justice initiatives for convicted criminals should emphasise their responsibility to society while improving reintegration opportunities for those who return to civil society.

Programmes should be designed in partnership with stakeholder NGOs and civil society with an emphasis on collaborative effort, particularly with businesses who will find it more cost-effective to fund social reform than to deal with the considerable cost of rising criminal activity.

The decisive response to covid19 by health professionals demonstrated to the nation what public health is capable of when it is fully supported. Even the context of crime and its impact as a public health issue – suggested in the past year by the Prime Minister – should be fully debated and acted upon.

Also, the pandemic momentum to improve facilities and care and place emphasis on the patient should continue with a strategic plan to revamp the public health sector.

The high incidence of deaths during the pandemic related to co-morbidities associated with non-communicable diseases points to a need for public health to embrace preventive diagnosis and treatment in its regime of care.

TT, along with all the island states of the Caribbean, are on the frontlines of climate-change impact.

The intransigence of first world industrialised nations on reducing emissions is troubling, but TT, the largest emissions polluter in the Caribbean and seventh in the world per capita, must do more than greenwash to demonstrate effective management of its petrochemical sector.

There must be more visible action on the Strategy for Reduction of Carbon Emissions action plan – developed in 2015 – which targeted reductions in accord with international expectations.

At least 75 per cent of emissions in TT are produced by industry and monitoring and enforcement of acceptable composition of gases produced by combustion and process remains lax.

To achieve those goals, the government must empower the Environmental Management Agency – a figurehead for most of its existence since its establishment in 1995 – to actively police greenhouse gas emissions.