Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day an­nounced the im­me­di­ate lift­ing of the 11 pm to 4 am cur­few in T&T.Ad­dress­ing a news brief­ing fol­low­ing a spe­cial meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who chaired the meet­ing, said: "The cur­few is over."She added, how­ev­er, that the state of emer­gency, which was de­clared on Au­gust 21, re­mains in ef­fect."So the cur­few is lift­ed both on land and on sea im­me­di­ate­ly. We will re­view that as well from day-to-day as we con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion," she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­vised cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue to ob­serve the laws of the land."The Gov­ern­ment re­serves the right to im­pose lim­it­ed cur­fews when and where nec­es­sary," she added.She said cer­tain ex­er­cis­es "to en­sure we do not slip back in­to the lev­el of crim­i­nal­i­ty will re­main."She said: "We will fur­ther strength­en the Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Com­mand."We will con­tin­ue to strength­en law en­force­ment pres­ence on the ground by re­tain­ing joint Army Po­lice pa­trols and by pre­cept­ing reg­i­men­tal po­lice from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment to sup­port po­lice work in the field.

"We will ex­pand CCTV across cities, malls and vul­ner­a­ble ar­eas and in­crease the num­ber of mo­bile pa­trols."We will in­tro­duce a range of specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed so­cial and cul­tur­al ini­tia­tives to strength­en com­mu­ni­ty life."An em­ploy­ment cre­ation in­ter­ven­tion to gen­er­ate 20,000 jobs in low in­come com­mu­ni­ties will be­gin short­ly."Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the state of emer­gency was suc­cess­ful, al­though not to­tal­ly. She said the mea­sure avert­ed a cri­sis that was threat­en­ing T&T in Au­gust.The Prime Min­is­ter was crit­i­cal of Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley who said there was no need for the state of emer­gency as the po­lice could have done their work with­out such a de­c­la­ra­tion.

She said: "It is un­for­tu­nate that we con­tin­ue to be sad­dled by an Op­po­si­tion which re­fus­es to work with the Gov­ern­ment in the na­tion­al In­ter­est and ap­par­ent­ly prefers in­stead to snipe and mis­lead cit­i­zens for nar­row par­ti­san rea­sons, even when the truth is al­ready in the pub­lic do­main."At a time when the na­tion was cry­ing out for a unit­ed as­sault on crime, the Op­po­si­tion politi­cians failed mis­er­ably to rise to the de­fence of the cit­i­zen­ry against a ma­raud­ing crim­i­nal force."Per­sad-Bisses­sar gave sta­tis­tics to show there was a sig­nif­i­cant de­crease in the num­ber of se­ri­ous crime in T&T dur­ing the emer­gency.

She said the mur­der toll for Oc­to­ber was the low­est in the past two decades.She added: "We do not claim a com­plete vic­to­ry. There have been chal­lenges along the way but un­doubt­ed­ly the bat­tle has been won to a large ex­tent."Per­sad-Bisses­sar stressed: "When gang lead­ers trem­ble in fear, we have won; when the crime rate plum­mets, we have won; when guns and am­mu­ni­tion are re­moved from the streets that could have killed one more in­no­cent man, woman or child, we have won."When one fam­i­ly can sleep bet­ter at night, we have won; when jus­tice pre­vails, we have won; when il­le­gal drugs are seized and de­stroyed and their op­er­a­tions shut down, we have won."

She added: "When the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and cit­i­zens alike can join hands and make the sac­ri­fice re­quired by en­dur­ing the state of emer­gency and the lim­i­ta­tions of the cur­few, all in the in­ter­est of the greater good, we have won."At the end of it all, the weapon­ry, drugs and crim­i­nals that were re­moved in the last two-and-a-half months had not been achieved in sev­er­al years of an­ti-crime ef­forts be­fore now," the PM said.She, how­ev­er, point­ed out: "It would be the great­est un­der­state­ment to say that the state of emer­gency and cur­few are a suc­cess. It saved our na­tion. It re­deemed all pre­vi­ous failed at­tempts."It has made Trinidad and To­ba­go safer than it has been for a very long time and it has giv­en us a plat­form for mov­ing for­ward pur­pose­ful­ly."