Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day re­vealed Gov­ern­ment would seek to ex­tend the state of emer­gency but re­duce cur­few hours when the mat­ter comes up for de­bate in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day.

She made the an­nounce­ment to her con­stituents at Pe­nal, af­ter com­mis­sion­ing a wa­ter project at Tem­ple Street, Dig­i­ty Trace, Pe­nal, which pro­vides pipe-borne wa­ter to 168 res­i­dents for the first time.

Some house­wives wept af­ter hear­ing they no longer have to tote wa­ter for miles from ponds, rivers and springs. Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so as­suaged her con­stituents' fears that crim­i­nals would rav­age their vil­lages when the state of emer­gency end­ed.

"I know some of you are wor­ried about what will hap­pen when the state of emer­gency ends, that the crim­i­nals will take re­venge when the cur­few comes to an end. "I want to as­sure you that we have strate­gies in place to deal with this if it should oc­cur." The Prime Min­is­ter said even though more than 800 per­sons have been de­tained since the state of emer­gency was de­clared last week, se­cu­ri­ty forces still need­ed ad­di­tion­al time to com­plete their work. She did not say what the new cur­few hours would be, not­ing that mat­ter had to first be dis­cussed by mem­bers of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. She added: "First we will go to Par­lia­ment on Fri­day and de­bate the state­ment from the Pres­i­dent and you are the first to know that we are go­ing to ex­tend the state of emer­gency.

"What we al­so want to do is re­duce the cur­few hours so that peo­ple can go about their nor­mal busi­ness and at the same time, the cur­few can al­low the pro­tec­tive ser­vices to do their job." Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil would give Gov­ern­ment ad­vice about re­duc­ing the cur­few. She paid trib­ute to mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice who have been work­ing round-the-clock to bring in the crim­i­nals. On Mon­day, de­tec­tives and CID of­fi­cers in the South­ern Di­vi­sion said they were not be­ing paid over­time, even though they have been work­ing in ex­cess of 100 hours a week since the state of emer­gency was de­clared. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "I want to thank the pro­tec­tive ser­vices for the great job they are do­ing. They have con­duct­ed them­selves with cour­tesy in most cas­es and they are mak­ing our cit­i­zens feel se­cure."

She added that even though the state of emer­gency had af­fect­ed the pock­ets of some busi­ness­peo­ple, fam­i­ly life had im­proved. She said: "Some peo­ple have said to me that they are now get­ting to spend more time with their chil­dren. It is a hard time for all of us but al­so it is a good time for us. "To­day marks the eighth day in which not a sin­gle life was tak­en by a crim­i­nal and this is an ac­com­plish­ment." She added that Gov­ern­ment would pro­vide so­cial pro­grammes to help crim­i­nals get away from a life of crime, as well as as­sis­tance to fam­i­lies. She said the four-pronged ap­proach of pre­ven­tion, de­tec­tion, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and con­vic­tion would be en­forced so that T&T could be a bet­ter, more pro­duc­tive and sta­ble state.