As MiLAT faces suspension …

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

The sus­pen­sion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (Mi­LAT) pro­gramme has sparked con­cern among ed­u­ca­tors and youth ad­vo­cates, who warn that in­ter­rupt­ing the ini­tia­tive could leave vul­ner­a­ble young men with­out one of the coun­try’s most sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­ven­tions against crime and so­cial ex­clu­sion.

The Min­istry of De­fence an­nounced this week that the pro­gramme has been sus­pend­ed while Gov­ern­ment re­views its fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty and con­sid­ers re­struc­tur­ing op­tions.

For Llewellyn “Short Pants” Mac In­tosh, who served as Mi­LAT’s cur­ricu­lum ad­min­is­tra­tor for 17 years, the im­me­di­ate con­cern is the 65 cadets who were prepar­ing to sit their Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­am­i­na­tions next year.

“I ad­dressed them just about two weeks ago, say­ing to them, well, look, the se­niors have left. So, you’ve got not even a year, you’ve got 11 months be­cause the ex­ams will be in May next year. So, you re­al­ly need to put your head down, or­gan­ise your stud­ies, do your SBAs, get se­ri­ous,” Mac In­tosh, who is al­so a vet­er­an ca­lyp­sion­ian, said.

“Un­der­stand se­niors have gone, you all are it. So, or­gan­ise your­self, get fo­cused and 11 months from now—I mean, I just said that two weeks ago—and then bam. So, you know, that has re­al­ly been the biggest blow.”

Mi­LAT is a two-year res­i­den­tial pro­gramme for young men aged 16 to 20, com­bin­ing mil­i­tary dis­ci­pline with aca­d­e­m­ic in­struc­tion to pre­pare par­tic­i­pants for CSEC and Caribbean Cer­tifi­cate of Sec­ondary Lev­el Com­pe­tence ex­am­i­na­tions.

Mac In­tosh said the pro­gramme was nev­er in­tend­ed as pun­ish­ment, but as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for young men who had strug­gled in the tra­di­tion­al school sys­tem.

“Sev­er­al of them, I mean, they tell you the sto­ries, you know. They lim­ing on the block till two o’clock, they lim­ing on the block till three o’clock, you know. They sleep till 11 o’clock the next day. So, they come here and get struc­ture in their life.”

Dur­ing his time at Mi­LAT, Mac In­tosh said he wit­nessed sig­nif­i­cant changes in the young men en­rolled in the pro­gramme.

“I have seen guys who come in here and you look at them two years af­ter and they’re dif­fer­ent. I mean, there’s a par­tic­u­lar one who is now an in­struc­tor. I re­mem­ber him five or six years ago, you know, as a re­bel­lious fel­low run­ning up and down and so on. I ac­tu­al­ly see the trans­for­ma­tion.”

He point­ed to for­mer cadets who lat­er re­turned as De­fence Force in­struc­tors or joined the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, de­scrib­ing the pro­gramme as “a cru­cible for ed­u­ca­tion at dif­fer­ent lev­els.”

Mac In­tosh al­so high­light­ed the pro­gramme’s aca­d­e­m­ic re­sults, say­ing its 2024 co­hort pro­duced its strongest CSEC per­for­mance.

“Near­ly 60 per cent of them got five pass­es, got well, what we call a full cer­tifi­cate. That is five pass­es and two of the pass­es, Eng­lish and Math­e­mat­ics, right? And then you might have had some who would have got­ten four pass­es and some got­ten three pass­es. In fact, in 2024, every­body got at least a sin­gle pass.”

De­spite those out­comes, he said Mi­LAT had con­sis­tent­ly op­er­at­ed with lim­it­ed re­sources and be­lieves greater in­vest­ment in youth de­vel­op­ment could re­duce fu­ture spend­ing on crime fight­ing.

Al­so con­tact­ed, youth ad­vo­cate and Fa­thers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go pres­i­dent Rhon­dall Fee­les said pro­grammes such as Mi­LAT should be pro­tect­ed from dis­rup­tions caused by changes in ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“That dis­con­nect and that dis­con­tin­u­a­tion, you change the head man­ag­er, you change the su­per­vi­sor who was in charge of the pro­gramme and you change and you change. And some­times they re­in­stall some­body who don’t have a pas­sion or con­nec­tiv­i­ty be­cause they wasn’t there when it orig­i­nat­ed.

“These are some of the things that cre­ate the chal­lenge. These are some of the things that cre­ate the prob­lem for the very groups that re­main there and need the as­sis­tance to con­tin­ue mov­ing for­ward.”

Fee­les al­so warned that young peo­ple out­side the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem re­main par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to crim­i­nal re­cruit­ment.

“My fear is we don’t want a Venezue­lan gang or a Tri­ni-Venezue­lan gang, a Trinizue­lan gang, now to de­vel­op with young peo­ple to add to the num­ber of gangs. Be­cause we must iden­ti­fy that we have a group of young peo­ple who, be­cause of their sta­tus here, are not en­list­ed in schools or en­list­ed in trade cen­tres.”

He al­so called for tougher leg­is­la­tion specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing gang lead­ers and mem­bers who re­cruit young peo­ple, along with stricter reg­u­la­tion of mu­sic played on ra­dio sta­tions that pro­motes sex­u­al con­tent and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“The ex­plic­it sex­u­al con­tent has gone from 10 to 100. Of course, cen­sor­ship and ban­ning needs to take place for this type of mu­sic that is over­ly sex­u­alised and over­ly ex­plic­it and pro­motes crim­i­nal in­tent like mur­der, rape and rob­bery, and these types of things,” he said.

“There must be a way to re­move it en­tire­ly, not even cen­sor it, par­tic­u­lar­ly when you’re see­ing young adults and even chil­dren mak­ing songs of that con­tent or singing songs writ­ten by adults. There must be con­se­quences for adults giv­ing chil­dren those songs to sing.”

He al­so ar­gued that arts ed­u­ca­tion should be ex­pand­ed, with greater em­pha­sis on mu­sic and the­atre along­side tra­di­tion­al aca­d­e­mics.

He said schools should pro­vide struc­tured op­por­tu­ni­ties for chil­dren in­ter­est­ed in song­writ­ing and mu­sic pro­duc­tion, al­low­ing them to de­vel­op their tal­ents in a pos­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment.

For Mac In­tosh, how­ev­er, Mi­LAT’s lega­cy ex­tends be­yond ex­am­i­na­tion re­sults or em­ploy­ment out­comes.

“Some of them have re­al­ly had dif­fi­cult, in some cas­es, trag­ic lives and they come here for two years, they get away from it and they get a chance to fo­cus on some­thing else and come out at the end of two years a bet­ter be­ing.”