Rhon­dor Dowlat

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has agreed to meet with Op­po­si­tion Leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, and her del­e­ga­tion on Fri­day at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, to dis­cuss ris­ing crime in the coun­try.

The talks are sched­uled even as the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil meets to­day to dis­cuss a video in cir­cu­la­tion from one of the coun­try's ma­jor crim­i­nal gangs, Ras­ta City gang, dis­play­ing a cache of weapons usu­al­ly used by sol­diers on the com­bat fields and moves by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to put more pres­sure on di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders of the Po­lice Ser­vice to be ac­count­able for in­creas­ing crime de­tec­tion in their re­spec­tive ar­eas.

In a let­ter, dat­ed Au­gust 24 ti­tled "Crime Cri­sis", Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­quest­ed an ur­gent meet­ing with Row­ley and mem­bers of their re­spec­tive na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty teams so that they could en­gage in a "non-par­ti­san di­a­logue on a way for­ward to com­bat se­ri­ous crime."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she hoped the meet­ing would blos­som in­to a joint an­ti-crime ini­tia­tive in­formed by rep­re­sen­ta­tives from both sides of the bench and, with the in­put of key na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty stake­hold­ers.

Yes­ter­day, Row­ley sent a let­ter to the Op­po­si­tion Leader invit­ing her and her team for the meet­ing. How­ev­er, it gave a dead­line of the end of to­day to sub­mit an agen­da of items to be raised in the meet­ing.

Just last week at the week­ly post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Row­ley as­sured the pop­u­la­tion that the struc­ture of the State to re­spond to those in­volved in crime was in­tact, vig­or­ous and on the front burn­er.

He said he al­so wel­comed talks with Per­sad-Bisses­sar on the is­sues, say­ing, how­ev­er, that he hopes that it will not be used to score po­lit­i­cal points.

One of the top­ics that may be pos­si­bly be dis­cussed is the is­sue of ex­tend­ing the life of the Bail (Amend­ment) Act and the An­ti-Gang leg­is­la­tion.

In a pre­vi­ous re­lease, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had ex­pressed con­cerns that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Faris Al-Rawi, failed to be hon­est about the em­pir­i­cal da­ta about how many peo­ple are in jail with­out bail un­der the ex­ist­ing law and who would be­come en­ti­tled to ap­ply for bail post Au­gust 15.

Two points, she not­ed was that: Al-Rawi does not have the sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta to show how many per­sons were de­nied bail un­der the An­ti-Gang Act and Bail (Amend­ment) Acts and sec­ond­ly, the re­lease of pris­on­ers who are on charges of kid­nap­ping for ran­som could be a se­cu­ri­ty risk to the coun­try af­ter Au­gust 15.

She stat­ed that Gov­ern­ment's rush to re­new the law re­lat­ing to the An­ti-Gang Act and Bail (Amend­ment) Acts with­out any ex­am­i­na­tion and analy­sis of the em­pir­i­cal da­ta must be con­demned.

"On what ba­sis was the Par­lia­ment be­ing asked to con­sid­er the re­new­al of these laws in the ab­sence of such ba­sic and vi­tal in­for­ma­tion?" Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, in a pre­vi­ous re­lease.