Beckles demands MiLAT reversal

Akash Sama­roo

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to re­verse its de­ci­sion to sus­pend the Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (Mi­LAT) Pro­gramme, de­scrib­ing the move as an­oth­er ma­jor set­back for youth de­vel­op­ment and crime pre­ven­tion and ques­tion­ing whether the coun­try can af­ford to lose one of its longest-run­ning so­cial in­ter­ven­tion ini­tia­tives.

In a state­ment sent to Guardian Me­dia, Beck­les said the sus­pen­sion rep­re­sent­ed "an­oth­er se­ri­ous blow" to vul­ner­a­ble young peo­ple and ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of dis­man­tling suc­cess­ful pro­grammes es­tab­lished un­der pre­vi­ous Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tions.

"The shut­down of the Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (Mi­LAT) Pro­gramme is a con­fir­ma­tion of the fail­ures of this UNC Gov­ern­ment and an­oth­er se­ri­ous blow to youth de­vel­op­ment and crime pre­ven­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go," she said.

Her com­ments come a day af­ter De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge an­nounced that Mi­LAT had been tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed while the Gov­ern­ment re­views the pro­gramme's fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty and un­der­takes a re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise.

Sturge said the pro­gramme was "not shut down" and that dis­cus­sions were un­der­way with the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force Re­serves and the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion to de­ter­mine its fu­ture. He said the Gov­ern­ment hoped to com­plete the re­struc­tur­ing as quick­ly as pos­si­ble but de­clined to say what form it would take, promis­ing fur­ther de­tails by the end of Ju­ly.

Beck­les, how­ev­er, ques­tioned whether fi­nan­cial con­straints were tru­ly be­hind the de­ci­sion.

She asked whether the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion re­flect­ed wider fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, sug­gest­ing the clo­sure raised con­cerns about the State's abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue fund­ing es­sen­tial pro­grammes.

"It begs the ques­tion whether this is a sign that the Gov­ern­ment has no mon­ey to ad­dress oth­er mat­ters of state. These clo­sures show that the Gov­ern­ment does not have mon­ey to pay for the ba­sic ameni­ties in the na­tion," she said.

Sturge has de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion, say­ing the pro­gramme in its cur­rent form was "not eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able" and re­quired re­struc­tur­ing. He al­so re­ject­ed claims that sus­pend­ing Mi­LAT would con­tribute to ris­ing crime, ar­gu­ing that the pro­gramme had ex­ist­ed dur­ing a pe­ri­od in which Trinidad and To­ba­go still ex­pe­ri­enced record mur­der rates.

But Beck­les in­sist­ed Mi­LAT's val­ue should not be mea­sured sole­ly by crime sta­tis­tics.

She ar­gued that the res­i­den­tial pro­gramme had trans­formed the lives of thou­sands of young men over the past two decades by pro­vid­ing ed­u­ca­tion, be­hav­iour­al de­vel­op­ment and em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to Beck­les, more than half of the 2024 in­take ob­tained a full aca­d­e­m­ic cer­tifi­cate through the pro­gramme, while many grad­u­ates had gone on to join the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, en­ter the work­force and be­come pos­i­tive in­flu­ences in their com­mu­ni­ties.

She al­so point­ed to a re­cent Unit­ed King­dom re­port on gangs in Trinidad and To­ba­go, which iden­ti­fied vul­ner­a­ble young peo­ple lack­ing ed­u­ca­tion, em­ploy­ment and pos­i­tive men­tor­ship as prime tar­gets for crim­i­nal re­cruit­ment.

"These are pre­cise­ly the young peo­ple Mi­LAT was de­signed to reach," she said.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of aban­don­ing young peo­ple by shut­ting down pro­grammes with­out putting al­ter­na­tives in place.

She com­pared Mi­LAT's sus­pen­sion to the ear­li­er sus­pen­sion of the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps (CCC), ar­gu­ing that both de­ci­sions had re­duced op­por­tu­ni­ties for vul­ner­a­ble youth.

"The Gov­ern­ment's con­tin­ued fail­ure to ad­dress ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment, shrink­ing eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties and in­creas­ing un­cer­tain­ty for young peo­ple across Trinidad and To­ba­go is alarm­ing," Beck­les said.

"At a time when op­por­tu­ni­ties are be­com­ing more dif­fi­cult to find, Gov­ern­ment should be ex­pand­ing pro­grammes that equip young peo­ple with ed­u­ca­tion, dis­ci­pline and em­ploy­able skills, not re­mov­ing them."

Beck­les fur­ther claimed that work­ers at­tached to Mi­LAT had told her their con­tracts were not re­newed and that a hir­ing freeze had been im­ple­ment­ed since April 2025, months be­fore Tues­day's an­nounce­ment. She said the clo­sure had now left about 100 em­ploy­ees with­out work.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader al­so crit­i­cised what she de­scribed as the Gov­ern­ment's lack of a broad­er strat­e­gy for youth de­vel­op­ment.

She ques­tioned whether Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was sat­is­fied with the per­for­mance of the Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, Phillip Watts, and said the min­istry re­mained with­out a Na­tion­al Youth Pol­i­cy de­spite be­ing a year in­to the Gov­ern­ment's term.

Mean­while Beck­les called on the De­fence Min­is­ter to ex­plain what pro­grammes would re­place Mi­LAT and how the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to sup­port the hun­dreds of vul­ner­a­ble young peo­ple who would have oth­er­wise en­tered the ini­tia­tive.

"Hav­ing al­lowed the CCC to be closed for an en­tire year, will Mi­LAT fol­low that same path?" she asked.

She urged the Gov­ern­ment to re­con­sid­er what she de­scribed as an ill-con­ceived de­ci­sion be­fore more young peo­ple lose ac­cess to op­por­tu­ni­ties that could place them on a path­way to ed­u­ca­tion, em­ploy­ment and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.