PM Rowley calls on churches to play a bigger role in developing society

Trinidad’s Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley on Tuesday appealed to churches to revert to the days when they played a much more meaningful role in society saying it is needed now more than ever to curb criminal activities, including murder in Trinidad and Tobago.

An estimated 605 people were murdered here last year and so far this year, the death toll has surpassed 130.

Speaking at the official handing over ceremony of Hayes Court, the official residence of the Anglican Bishop of Port of Spain, Prime Minister Rowley said he was calling on the Bishop and his colleagues to do more to help in building the society.

He said there were too “many instances of the drug dealer, the gang leader…succeeding in replacing what the churches used to do.

“I don’t say this to denigrate anyone or to place blame on any particular sector of the national community. It is a responsibility that we all have and we should take note of what is happening to us,” Rowley told the ceremony, adding that the youths of the country must be protected.

“Many of our young people are being raised in homes where the parents do not pay any attention to the upbringing of those children, boys, and girls, and when those children come out into the national community you see the deficiency.

“It is also a time in the history of the human race where religion plays a lesser and lesser role and I am not here speaking as a religious zealot or a member of any clergy (but) I do know that the teaching of the religious bodies would have contributed to that period of what we call the old time days when the kinds of behavior we see now in our population was not the behavior that we have been accustomed to”.

He warned that the gangs and other social ills of society were replacing the role of the parent and the church and that the future of the country must be protected.

“And if for any reason and that is the only reason why we encourage religion in our national community then that is a good enough reason.

CMC/