The spiraling crime is violently eroding some of the positive gains the country has made, according to president of the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce, Ian Welch.
By Roxanne StapletonWelch also says he is "not at all satisfied that enough is being done to fight crime" and has called on all politicians and people to do their part to improve this country's deteriorating state.
Welch's statements were echoed by Caribbean Airlines chairman, Arthur Lok Jack, as both men spoke at the Chamber's annual dinner at the Hilton Trinidad, Port of Spain, on Thursday night.
Making reference to kidnapped businesswoman, Vindra Naipaul-Coolman, Welch added: "Our pain continues with the unsolved kidnapping of one of the most gifted and generous members of the business community, even as members of the business community continue to be the targets of criminal elements.
"Our society seems to be crumbling. When we felt that things could get no worse, we sunk deeper with the brutal slayings of Police Constable Elizabeth Sutherland and her family."
"A society in which a five-year-old child must forever live with the images of her family being massacred is not one that can look optimistically to the future."
He pointed to children carrying knives and cutlasses in their school bags and participating in pornographic film making as further evidence of a country "not in good moral health".
While he noted that the Chamber will continue to lobby Government for the institution of an efficient witness protection plan, revised DNA legislation, Police Service reform and more courts and magistrates, Welch warned that the Chamber will demand an agenda from all parties running in the upcoming general elections.
"We will therefore be calling on all parties facing the elections to present their agenda for change to this Chamber, devoid of triviality and banality," he said.
"What we need is an agenda that does not back down from telling the population the truth. Leaders who have the courage and intellectual capacity to confront the evil that presently stalks this land are fiscally responsible and socially progressive. Political parties that are free of special interests and make Trinis understand that God is not a Trini, who will protect us no matter how irresponsible, or profligate we become."
Taking up from Welch, Lok Jack lamented that the "crime wave which plagues Trinidad and Tobago" is progressively making the country a less desirable place to live.
"A loss of trust is one of the inevitable results of the crime wave... this supports a rise in individualistic behaviour.
"We are already seeing this everywhere, on the roads and particularly at traffic lights, in various professions and most certainly in the Parliament," Lok Jack said.
Zeroing in on politicians, he agreed that the Westminster System is founded on the premise that the best decisions are made through debate, but insisted that "we must heed when opposition is necessary and when a united front is more appropriate".
"We cannot continue to have national interests subordinated to political ones," Lok Jack insisted.
"It is manifestly unfair for a very few of us, who have means to afford additional security to protect ourselves, when the rest of the law-abiding society lies supine and vulnerable to remorseless criminal elements."
