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.