An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty has mixed views on the State of Emer­gency (SoE), with some lead­ers ex­press­ing cau­tious sup­port.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce in a state­ment em­pha­sis­es that while the SoE is an im­por­tant step, it is not a stand­alone so­lu­tion to T&T’s crime prob­lem.  

The cham­ber said it must be part of a broad­er, com­pre­hen­sive, and sus­tain­able plan to com­bat crime ef­fec­tive­ly.

Ad­dress­ing crime, the T&T Cham­ber said the is­sue is not on­ly about sav­ing lives but al­so safe­guard­ing liveli­hoods and fos­ter­ing an en­vi­ron­ment con­ducive to eco­nom­ic growth and sta­bil­i­ty.

“Dur­ing this pe­ri­od of sus­pen­sion of rights un­der the SoE, we al­so ex­pect that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice will be sen­si­tive to height­ened pub­lic sen­ti­ments and be care­ful to not cre­ate any per­cep­tion of abuse,” it men­tioned.

Giv­ing its per­spec­tive, Am­cham T&T said it is pleased that the Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing ad­di­tion­al steps to com­bat out-of-con­trol crime in T&T.

“The fact that more peo­ple have been mur­dered in 2024 than in any oth­er year, clear­ly means that ad­di­tion­al mea­sures need to be im­ple­ment­ed as the cur­rent ap­proach­es are not work­ing. We al­so recog­nise that the Gov­ern­ment is del­i­cate­ly seek­ing to bal­ance these ad­di­tion­al mea­sures with the preser­va­tion of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty,” the busi­ness group said in a news re­lease yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, Am­cham T&T said it would al­so be con­cerned about any mea­sures that cur­tail civ­il lib­er­ties.

“As such, while we are sup­port­ive of the SoE in the man­ner it has been an­nounced, at this time we await both the reg­u­la­tions with ap­pro­pri­ate safe­guards against the po­ten­tial ar­bi­trary abuse of pow­er by in­di­vid­ual mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.”

The pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Ki­ran Singh, al­so wel­comed the move, say­ing crim­i­nals seem to have the up­per hand.

“We are in full sup­port of the State of Emer­gency. It’s high time that some­thing is done about the crim­i­nal el­e­ment. They have the up­per hand. We feel we are held at ran­som by the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, which con­sists of a small num­ber of peo­ple. It’s time to take back con­trol of our coun­try,” he added.

He al­so had ad­vice for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and the gen­er­al pub­lic.

“If you don’t need to be out­side, then stay in­doors. You may be in a safer po­si­tion to open lat­er than usu­al be­cause the po­lice and army pres­ence will be felt through­out the length and breadth of the coun­try in the com­ing days.”

Al­so, the Pres­i­dent of the Fyz­abad Cham­ber of Com­merce, An­ge­nie Jairam said “Ac­cord­ing to the act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, there will be no cur­few and the move­ment of peo­ple for meet­ings/gath­er­ings/march­es for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens will not be af­fect­ed. How­ev­er, SoE means we law-abid­ing cit­i­zens have part­ly lost our free­dom of move­ment and pri­va­cy. We do hope the au­thor­i­ties have not put an­oth­er plas­ter on this huge sore and it will be re­sult-ori­ent­ed.”

The pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, Daphne Bartlett, said she hoped the SoE would ad­dress the deep­er is­sues fu­el­ing crime.”I am sur­prised they have not called a lim­it­ed cur­few in some ar­eas. We have been call­ing for a state of emer­gency for three years now,” she said.

She ex­pressed the be­lief that in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ments could have con­tributed to the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to im­ple­ment an SoE in ad­di­tion to the “hor­ren­dous crime” that is at a record high in T&T.

“We have the swear­ing-in of Nicolás Maduro on Jan­u­ary 10. We have a big mi­grant pop­u­la­tion, and we have to look at that be­cause of their in­put in the crimes be­ing com­mit­ted, so we have to fac­tor that in as well,” she ex­plained.

Deal­ing with the mur­der toll, vice chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC) , and pres­i­dent of the East­ern Busi­ness Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (EBMA) Ri­car­do Mo­hammed stat­ed, “It is quite dis­heart­en­ing that the Gov­ern­ment has called for a state of emer­gency, es­pe­cial­ly when the mur­der rate sur­passed 600. This is a clear in­dict­ment of the Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to ad­dress the na­tion­al scourge of crime and mur­ders. The EBMA and the CR­BC have been call­ing for im­ple­ment­ing a state of emer­gency dur­ing the past five years, but such calls have fall­en on deaf ears.

“It ap­pears that our dif­fer­ent arms of our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty need to work much bet­ter as a team, and to put in place ef­fec­tive and prac­ti­cal strate­gic plans to meet and pre­vent crime, for the safe­ty of our cit­i­zens and com­mu­ni­ties are para­mount,” Mo­hammed said.

But Glen­wayne Su­chit, pres­i­dent of the Pri­vate Phar­ma­cy Re­tail Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (PPR­BA) of­fered a strong­ly word­ed state­ment, “It is with dis­may that I am fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of an SoE in our na­tion as two gangs are at war and our lead­ers are sud­den­ly con­cerned about the safe­ty of our cit­i­zens in the af­ter­math of these gang-re­lat­ed killings. Have our lead­ers been asleep while our in­no­cent cit­i­zens, broth­ers, sis­ters, moth­ers, fa­thers, chil­dren, and busi­ness peo­ple have been un­der siege with mur­der, kid­nap­ping, ex­tor­tion, home in­va­sion, and rob­bery be­ing the norm.”

The Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) head Bal­dath Ma­haraj said the Cham­ber has been call­ing for an SOE for the longest while.

He said, “It’s wel­comed by the busi­ness­men and more so the en­tire board of the CCIC.”  

Ma­haraj said the armed forces should ex­er­cise cau­tion “The last time one was done, it cost us tax­pay­ers a lot of mon­ey and we should ex­er­cise some lev­el of cau­tion to en­sure that when we con­duct those search­es and ar­rests it con­firms with the laws of T&T. A lot of those who were ar­rest­ed were not charged and the state had to pay a lot of mon­ey to­wards them.”

Mean­while, T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vices In­dus­tries CEO Daren Lee Sing wel­comed the as­sur­ance that the mea­sure will not dis­rupt eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties.

He said, “We are pleased that there is no cur­few at this time, which al­lows law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es to con­tin­ue their op­er­a­tions un­in­ter­rupt­ed. By tar­get­ing crim­i­nal el­e­ments while pre­serv­ing the op­er­a­tions of busi­ness­es and in­dus­tries, this ini­tia­tive strikes a cru­cial bal­ance be­tween na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty.”