The Par­lia­ment should be ashamed of the func­tion­ing of its Joint Par­lia­ment Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty that was es­tab­lished on No­vem­ber 13, 2015–more than three months now.

Giv­en the un­ac­cept­ably high mur­der rate–prob­a­bly over 70 bod­ies by now, what has this Com­mit­tee done thus far to as­sist the pop­u­la­tion which they rep­re­sent?

We, the mem­bers of the pub­lic, re­al­ly hoped that Par­lia­ment, the place where our rep­re­sen­ta­tives sit to rep­re­sent us, would have dealt with this is­sue of crime and pub­lic safe­ty more se­ri­ous­ly. They should have been meet­ing week­ly and de­mand­ing an­swers and ac­tion as they are em­pow­ered to do.

Let us take a quick look at their pow­er­ful terms of ref­er­ence. They have the "du­ty of con­sid­er­ing, from time to time, and re­port­ing when­ev­er nec­es­sary, on all mat­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty pol­i­cy of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

This is a pow­er­ful re­spon­si­bil­i­ty here. Can they in­form us on what they con­sid­ered thus far with re­gard to mur­ders? Let us as­sume that they can­not deal with every­thing at one time and so soon. But mur­ders have been strik­ing­ly high. What did they re­port to the rest of Par­lia­ment and by ex­ten­sion the pub­lic? Na­da.

In ad­di­tion, this pow­er­ful com­mit­tee is au­tho­rised to ex­am­ine three oth­er ar­eas and re­port on. These are:

a. se­cu­ri­ty, safe­ty and the pro­tec­tion of cit­i­zens;

b. work­ing re­la­tion­ships be­tween var­i­ous agen­cies in­volved in in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing and how they col­lect, co-or­di­nate, analyse and dis­sem­i­nate in­for­ma­tion and how these func­tions might be en­hanced;

c. mech­a­nisms to re­view the per­for­mance and ac­tiv­i­ties of the var­i­ous agen­cies in­volved in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture.

What did they do on any of the above over three months while hu­man be­ings are slaugh­tered? Does Par­lia­ment set up these com­mit­tees for kicks? Do cit­i­zens re­al­ly ex­pect them to work?

There are eight mem­bers on this com­mit­tee; 5 PNM, 1 In­de­pen­dent, 1 UNC and 1 COP. It is chaired by PNM's Fitzger­ald Hinds. Can the non-PNM mem­bers come out and tell the pub­lic what have been go­ing on in this seem­ing­ly dead com­mit­tee? We con­tin­ue to look on with in­creas­ing pes­simism.

Rick King