Pan Trin­ba­go Pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore is urg­ing Gov­ern­ment to fo­cus on re­fur­bish­ing pa­n­yards rather than con­struct­ing com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres, as pa­n­yards guide young peo­ple to­ward pos­i­tive paths.

“We can pause on the con­struc­tion of com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres and up­grade pa­n­yards as we do the work to pre­vent our young peo­ple from get­ting in­volved in idle ac­tiv­i­ties,” she said on In­ter­na­tion­al Youth Day, which was ob­served yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing at Steel­pan on D Prom­e­nade: Youth Edi­tion on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade in Port-of-Spain, Ram­sey-Moore said that pan band man­agers and in­struc­tors not on­ly wel­come young peo­ple in­to the safe and sa­cred spaces of the pa­n­yards to play mu­sic, but al­so do much more be­hind the scenes across the 300 pa­n­yards un­der the or­gan­i­sa­tion.