Some busi­ness cham­bers be­lieve that a lim­it­ed State of Emer­gency (SOE) in known hotspots will help with the crime cri­sis. But the chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness­es, Vivek Char­ran says the SoEs in the past have not helped solve the crime is­sue. 

Peo­ple from dif­fer­ent quar­ters of the coun­try have been call­ing for an SoE as a re­cent spike in the num­ber of mur­ders oc­cur­ring dai­ly has left cit­i­zens un­easy.  

Crim­i­nol­o­gists and for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, told the Sun­day Guardian that an SoE is not the an­swer. 

But the lead­ers of some busi­ness cham­bers, have a dif­fer­ent take on the im­pact a SoE would have on the coun­try.

The last State of Emer­gency in the coun­try was in 2011 un­der the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Yes­ter­day, Ang­ie Jairam, pres­i­dent of the Fyz­abad Cham­ber called for a lim­it­ed SoE in known hotspots and at-risk com­mu­ni­ties. She said this must be ac­com­pa­nied by joint po­lice/army pa­trols through­out the coun­try.  

“This will serve to re­vive some con­fi­dence that has been lost by the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and by the pop­u­la­tion as a whole. A full State of Emer­gency would hurt busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly restau­rants, bars, street food, and even night­clubs. In this way, there will be busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly lim­it­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties and even­tu­al­ly build­ing trust with the Po­lice Ser­vice over time. Con­se­quent­ly, more so­cial pro­grammes are al­so need­ed,” Jairam stressed. 

Samuel George, Chair­man of the Gas­par­il­lo Cham­ber agreed with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a lim­it­ed SoE but not­ed that this is on­ly one step.  

He agreed that more so­cial pro­grammes were bad­ly need­ed to be im­ple­ment­ed to as­sist at-risk youth.  

George al­so in­di­cat­ed that the SoE must be able to in­volve night­ly cur­fews, longer de­ten­tion pe­ri­ods with­out for­mal charges, and the abil­i­ty of po­lice to search prop­er­ties with­out war­rants. 

How­ev­er, Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness­es, Vivek Char­ran said over the years when an SoE is called it cre­ates more con­flict.

“What it cre­at­ed where cur­fews were in­volved, it cre­at­ed a pe­ri­od where there was con­flict. And then af­ter the SoE was lift­ed, crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty just re­bound­ed, and it dou­bled. The sec­ond thing is, a State of Emer­gency, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it in­volves cur­fews and so on, it has al­ways hurt busi­ness. As the head of a busi­ness cham­ber that rep­re­sents many small and medi­um busi­ness­es, I have to say that I am not go­ing to pro­pose any­thing that is go­ing to hurt busi­ness­es more than they’re al­ready hurt­ing. 

“They are hurt­ing from for­eign ex­change short­ages, they’re hurt­ing from the re­duced com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty, they’re hurt­ing be­cause of in­creased costs, in­creased debt, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter COVID-19,” Char­ran lament­ed. 

He not­ed that vi­o­lent crimes and gang killings are of great con­cern.

“So what we’re see­ing is the same lead­er­ship in crime, and the re­sults are not where it’s sup­posed to be, yet the lead­er­ship is not be­ing changed,” he added.

How­ev­er, Emer­son Chadee, pres­i­dent of the Siparia Cham­ber said that some­thing has to be done to ar­rest the un­ac­cept­able lev­els of crime tak­ing place na­tion­wide, but at the same time al­low for busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity.

Chadee called on the Gov­ern­ment to al­lo­cate more re­sources to the po­lice ser­vice to ad­dress the scourge of crime and in­sti­tute the joint po­lice/army pa­trols as an im­me­di­ate stop­gap mea­sure, ac­com­pa­nied by the SoE. 

Mean­while, Daphne Bartlett, pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (SBA) has called on the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress the in­flows of il­le­gal guns. 

She too called for a lim­it­ed SoE and for the po­lice ser­vice to be prop­er­ly re­sourced. How­ev­er,  the SBA al­so said once the Pointe-a-Pierre Re­fin­ery is re­opened it would bring about eco­nom­ic im­prove­ment and this may re­sult in sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment for the na­tion’s youth.  

Ri­car­do Mo­hammed, CR­BC Vice Chair­man and pres­i­dent of the EBMA (East­ern Mer­chants Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion) said the TTPs should ac­cess ex­ter­nal as­sis­tance, and this can be made pos­si­ble through a Gov­ern­ment-to-Gov­ern­ment arrange­ment with the Unit­ed States.  

“This step can en­sure that the TTPS gets all the tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance it needs to deal with crime.”

Mo­hammed al­so sup­ports a lim­it­ed State of Emer­gency, sim­i­lar to what ex­ists in Ja­maica.