Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dis­missed al­le­ga­tions that the Gov­ern­ment's war on crime is covert racism say­ing as the state of emer­gency con­tin­ues, com­mu­ni­ty pro­grammes will be rolled out to unite and build com­mu­ni­ties. She was speak­ing to re­porters fol­low­ing a meet­ing with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil at her Phillip­ine home late yes­ter­day. Dub­bing the al­le­ga­tions of racism as false and ma­li­cious, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­it­er­at­ed: "I will say again that this is a fight against crime and noth­ing else. We will not com­pro­mise or hold this coun­try to ran­som.

"The al­le­ga­tions are to­tal­ly false. There are some peo­ple who are bent on mis­chief who are mak­ing these al­le­ga­tions, but the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple are very hap­py and they feel com­fort­able in their homes. They feel safer and they can sleep in their homes." Asked whether she planned to heed calls from her con­stituents to ex­tend the cur­few to the re­gions of Pe­nal, Debe and Siparia, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said "no." She said based on in­tel­li­gence, there was no in­for­ma­tion to sug­gest that an ex­ten­sion of the cur­few to the re­gion was war­rant­ed.

"My con­stituents may not have been ad­vised or briefed. There was one in­ci­dent which was a do­mes­tic is­sue. I am not of that view and we have no such in­tel­li­gence that the area is un­der any se­ri­ous threat and if such in­for­ma­tion is forth­com­ing, we will dis­cuss it at the lev­el of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil," she said. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she would re­con­sid­er calls from busi­ness own­ers to change the time of the cur­few which is cur­rent­ly set at 9 pm to 5 am.