Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment had ini­tial­ly planned to im­ple­ment a dai­ly 6 pm to 6 am cur­few in "hot spots" in­volved in the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy said yes­ter­day. He made the com­ment at a me­dia brief­ing at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, Port-of-Spain, re­gard­ing the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency and the 9 pm to 5 am cur­few now in force. The plan is be­ing ap­plied in six ar­eas in north, east, south and cen­tral Trinidad in a bid to clamp down on crim­i­nal el­e­ments.Sandy ac­knowl­edged there would be some dis­com­fort for mem­bers of the pub­lic. He said, for in­stance, Gov­ern­ment ini­tial­ly had con­sid­ered a 6 pm to 6 am cur­few.

But he said oth­er "en­ti­ties" made a case to al­ter that in view of the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty's holy fast­ing month of Ra­madan. Sandy said ef­forts were in place to en­sure those who were re­quired to be on the streets af­ter the 9 pm cur­few would have pass­es or per­mits. "But per­sons are not re­quired to be on the streets af­ter 9 pm, Please co-op­er­ate with us and stay at home-the best place to be is at home," Sandy added. He said se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies would have dealt le­nient­ly with those who had ap­plied for pass­es and had not got them by last night. Such per­sons who had not re­ceived their pass­es were ad­vised to have two forms of pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams said per­sons ar­riv­ing at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port af­ter cur­few hours could ac­cess pass­es to reach their des­ti­na­tion at a spe­cial counter near the air­port's do­mes­tic ter­mi­nal. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said the PTSC had put on ad­di­tion­al bus­es to ac­com­mo­date the trav­el­ling pub­lic to get home by cur­few time. Williams said ap­pli­ca­tions for pass­es or per­mits could be made at the ap­pli­cant's near­est po­lice sta­tion. He said per­mits would be lim­it­ed to per­sons who would be re­quired by work to move out­side of cur­few hours and oth­er peo­ple in the es­sen­tial ser­vices and not for every­one who ap­plied.

Williams said the me­dia did not fall in­to the cat­e­go­ry of es­sen­tial ser­vices. He said pass­es would not ap­ply to taxi or maxi dri­vers or PH dri­vers. He ad­vised that per­sons would have to ad­just arrange­ments to ac­cess their homes by cur­few times since it was al­most im­pos­si­ble to man­age is­su­ing of per­mits to taxis for some ar­eas. Williams said se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers al­so would be giv­en in­struc­tions on dis­cre­tion to deal with the is­sue of per­sons who have to get to hos­pi­tals. He said sol­diers would be col­lab­o­rat­ing with po­lice on op­er­a­tions, al­though the army would be able to op­er­ate on its own.

Un­der the emer­gency pow­ers reg­u­la­tions:

• No per­son shall be out of doors in the ar­eas and at the times spec­i­fied in Sched­ule 3 with­out a per­mit in writ­ing of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, or such oth­er per­son or au­thor­i­ty as may be au­tho­rised by him for the pur­pose and any such per­mis­sion may be grant­ed sub­ject to such con­di­tions as may be spec­i­fied there­in;

• a per­son shall be ex­empt­ed from the re­quire­ment of a per­mit if they pro­duce ev­i­dence that they are a po­lice of­fi­cer or De­fence Force mem­ber on du­ty;

• a per­mit may be ob­tained up­on writ­ten ap­pli­ca­tion to the of­fi­cer in charge of a po­lice sta­tion; and

• an ap­pli­cant for per­mit shall pro­vide to an of­fi­cer in charge of the po­lice sta­tion to whom an ap­pli­ca­tion is made, his name, home ad­dress and, if em­ployed, work ad­dress and tele­phone num­bers.