In 2008, the world’s most dangerous jobs ranged from fishers, pilots and loggers to trash collectors, roofers and truckers. Obviously, the researchers and data collectors did not consider the job of “community leader,” an occupation which in Trinidad and Tobago has a fatality rate above 90 percent. Exactly three years ago local media reported that the country’s Prime Minister met “community leaders” at Crowne Plaza hotel in Port-of-Spain, ostensibly to “broker a peace pact among rival gang leaders of the Morvant/Laventille and Port-of-Spain areas.”
Of the 20 community leaders meeting in 2006, 18 or 19 have since been murdered.
Trinidad and Tobago, at current rates, will end 2009, second to Jamaica in the region, in homicide rates. Jamaica seems headed to finish 2009 just under its 2008 toll of 1660 or 59 murders per 100,000 citizens. Both Caribbean countries will keep company with regional counterparts Honduras, Venezuela, Guatemala and El Salvador in the world’s top ten murderous countries per capita. Jamaica, as usual, should end up with gold.
Click the above link to read my Newsday column.
Of the 20 community leaders meeting in 2006, 18 or 19 have since been murdered.
Trinidad and Tobago, at current rates, will end 2009, second to Jamaica in the region, in homicide rates. Jamaica seems headed to finish 2009 just under its 2008 toll of 1660 or 59 murders per 100,000 citizens. Both Caribbean countries will keep company with regional counterparts Honduras, Venezuela, Guatemala and El Salvador in the world’s top ten murderous countries per capita. Jamaica, as usual, should end up with gold.
Click the above link to read my Newsday column.
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