NADALEEN SINGH

Gov­ern­ment plans to in­tro­duce more se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures in the sis­ter isle of To­ba­go fol­low­ing the at­tack on British cou­ple Pe­ter Greene, 65, and his wife Muri­um, 59. Gov­ern­ment has al­so planned for the cou­ple's fam­i­ly mem­bers to vis­it them. The cou­ple was at­tacked around 2.30 pm on Sat­ur­day at their house in Ba­co­let,To­ba­go. Tourism Min­is­ter Joseph Ross made the an­nounce­ment at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence.

Ross said arrange­ments have been made for fam­i­ly mem­bers of the vic­tims to vis­it them. "We have al­so been mak­ing arrange­ments for the rel­a­tives to be brought back to Trinidad so that they can stay with the Greenes. We are ar­rang­ing coun­selling ser­vices for them when they are here so that we would re­duce the im­pact that this kind of in­ci­dent would have on them," Ross said. He said he vis­it­ed the cou­ple on Sun­day. "We have faith that our law en­force­ment agen­cies will use the full force of the law to ap­pre­hend those per­sons who per­pe­trat­ed this crime and those per­pe­tra­tors are brought to jus­tice as soon as pos­si­ble," Ross said.

He said al­so, se­cu­ri­ty on the sis­ter isle had been beefed up and more mea­sures in the long-run are ex­pect­ed to be in­tro­duced. "For in­stance they (THA) have es­tab­lished joint po­lice and army pa­trols, spe­cial pa­trols by the De­fence Force at guest hous­es and ho­tels. That was one of the im­me­di­ate mea­sures put in place. The re-de­ploy­ment of per­son­nel at Crown Point has been done and there has been the es­tab­lish­ment of two hot­lines in To­ba­go to deal with emer­gen­cies. On­go­ing dis­cus­sions have start­ed with the po­lice, hote­liers and se­cu­ri­ty firms re­gard­ing im­prov­ing se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments and ac­com­mo­da­tion at guest hous­es," he said.

Ross al­so said mea­sures have been put in place to pro­tect the To­ba­go sea­side. "There has been the in­tro­duc­tion of horse pa­trols on To­ba­go beach­es, the in­tro­duc­tion of the ca­nine unit and the in­stal­la­tion of the ad­vanced pas­sen­ger sys­tem," Ross said. He said there were oth­er mea­sures be­ing con­sid­ered such as the es­tab­lish­ment of a po­lice unit to deal specif­i­cal­ly with tourism. An­oth­er mea­sure now be­ing con­sid­ered was the es­tab­lish­ment of a po­lice ma­rine unit and the in­crease of mar­itime and land en­force­ment of­fi­cers on the isle.

Im­pact on Tourism

The at­tack on the Greenes would have an im­pact on the Tourism sec­tor in To­ba­go Ross said. "We ex­pect that it would have an im­pact. What we are try­ing to do is to en­sure that we have ad­e­quate se­cu­ri­ty. Sys­tems are in place to give the vis­i­tors the as­sur­ances that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of these peo­ple com­mit­ting these crimes and get­ting away will be re­duced sig­nif­i­cant­ly," Ross said. Asked if the Gov­ern­ment planned to do fur­ther mar­ket­ing of To­ba­go, he said mar­ket­ing will be con­tin­ued.

"We will con­tin­ue to do our mar­ket­ing as we have been do­ing in the UK and in oth­er parts of Eu­rope. It's now left to the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny and the THA to come up with their mar­ket­ing strate­gies," Ross said. Com­ment­ing on the trav­el ad­vi­sories from the UK and Aus­tralia which changed since this in­ci­dent oc­curred, Ross said Gov­ern­ment had not­ed them. "Gov­ern­ment has not­ed with con­cern the trav­el ad­vi­so­ry up­dates from the Unit­ed King­dom and Aus­tralia," Ross said.