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.