Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the first night of cur­few un­der the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency has re­sult­ed in crime ground to al­most ze­ro. Speak­ing with re­porters dur­ing the tour of the Chancery Lane Hos­pi­tal Com­plex, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar hailed Mon­day night's po­lice pa­trols and ex­er­cise as a suc­cess. She added: "I am pleased to re­port that re­sults are al­ready com­ing in that crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion has been gleaned, weapons and am­mu­ni­tion seized and ban­dits who fought with our law en­force­ment units have been killed. "Al­ready crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty has ground to al­most ze­ro and gangs are on the run. "I am quite aware that this lull is due to lim­i­ta­tions im­posed up­on crim­i­nal el­e­ments but which is al­so con­fin­ing the free­dom of in­no­cent cit­i­zens."

Al­though yes­ter­day was day two of the state of emer­gency, she said: "All in­di­ca­tors are there that the strat­e­gy is de­liv­er­ing the pos­i­tive re­sults ex­pect­ed." She said the in­con­ve­nience be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by law-abid­ing cit­i­zens would be well worth it if "we can bring back some mea­sure of se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty in T&T." Ex­press­ing grat­i­tude to the joint ser­vices who are in­volved in "these dan­ger­ous ex­er­cis­es," she said the na­tion salut­ed them. If af­ter the 15 days the state of emer­gency had to be ex­tend­ed, she said, they must go the Par­lia­ment. "The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is check­ing on that for us. What­ev­er has to be done has to be done with­in 15 days, to go to Par­lia­ment, she said."

She de­nied that one of the rea­sons the ac­tion was tak­en was be­cause a con­tain­er of guns and am­mu­ni­tion was found on the port. Asked when she would be meet­ing with Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, she said: "In due course we will cer­tain­ly meet with the him. A date has not been set and my pri­or­i­ty right now is re­al­ly in this first leg to get the op­er­a­tions and lo­gis­tics go­ing on to the best that we can." Al­so on tour were Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan, Ude­cott chair­man Jear­lean John, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma and South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) chair­man Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe.