Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy yes­ter­day de­nied hav­ing any knowl­edge of wire tap­ping de­spite hav­ing sev­er­al meet­ings with the Strate­gic In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA) di­rec­tor with­in the past few months. Sandy was speak­ing with re­porters at the launch of Con­certs of Hope 2010 at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Tem­ple Court, Port-of-Spain. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, the list of pub­lic of­fi­cials whose phones were tapped by the SIA. The SIA had been in ex­is­tence from 1994 un­der the for­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment Gov­ern­ment. "The di­rec­tor re­port­ed to me but I had no knowl­edge of any­one be­ing wire tapped," Sandy said.

"Mr Clement and I met be­tween May and No­vem­ber 4. Dur­ing this time we had nor­mal ad­min­is­tra­tive re­ports," he added. Sandy, how­ev­er, said the SIA was fund­ed by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and he had not vis­it­ed the unit. "The funds came from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. It is the rea­son why an in­quiry is be­ing launched," he said. In ad­di­tion, Sandy did not want to voice his opin­ions on how he felt about his phone be­ing tapped. The new crime ini­tia­tive was launched hop­ing to fight against crime in part­ner­ing steel and brass bands and the Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices through­out var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties. "The in­ten­tion is to cul­ti­vate this part­ner­ship so as to fos­ter more mean­ing­ful com­mu­ni­ty re­la­tion­ships be­tween un­formed of­fi­cers and mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ties," Sandy said.

He said the mes­sage re­mains, "let us com­pete in sports and cul­ture and not guns and vi­o­lence." "Con­certs of Hope will in­ter­ject a pos­i­tive in­flu­ence through mu­sic in their sur­round­ing en­vi­ron­ment," he said. The min­is­ter took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to an­nounce a pro­gramme deal­ing with is­sues of "fa­ther­less" chil­dren. The fo­cus would be in Laven­tille, Beetham, Sea Lots and Mor­vant com­mu­ni­ties. "While a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of our young men have lost their lives to vi­o­lent crimes, there are those who are still un­for­tu­nate­ly not tak­ing up their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties," Sandy said.