The Gov­ern­ment will not apol­o­gise for hav­ing the will to take the fight to the crim­i­nals says Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er. Speak­ing with the me­dia on Mon­day, af­ter meet­ing with fi­nal­ists of the Miss T&T In­de­pen­dence com­pe­ti­tion, Warn­er ex­pressed his full sup­port for the state of emer­gency im­ple­ment­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Sun­day. "Be­fore now, no Gov­ern­ment had the guts or will to take the fight to the crim­i­nals...We are not in any­way go­ing to apol­o­gise for do­ing what is right," he said.

He added that there would be in­con­ve­niences of var­i­ous de­grees, but felt cit­i­zens would have to bear with in­con­ve­niences for the good of the coun­try. Warn­er said he was con­vinced that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the peo­ple would sup­port these mea­sures. "For over ten years, this coun­try has been liv­ing in a self-im­posed state of emer­gency, peo­ple have been go­ing home and re­fus­ing to come out, and re­fus­ing to walk in cer­tain parts of the coun­try," Warn­er said. He de­scribed the fear and anx­i­ety peo­ple faced when leav­ing their homes as part of the self-im­posed state of emer­gency. "Now we have made it of­fi­cial for a short pe­ri­od to bring the coun­try back to a sense of nor­mal­cy," he said. "This coun­try will not bend to the crim­i­nals."

Warn­er said the state of emer­gency would af­fect some of the projects un­der his min­istry's port­fo­lio.

"It will af­fect drainage work and work on the high­way as well as work in Princes Town, La Brea and Point Fortin," he added. He said work would be ex­pe­dit­ed on sur­veil­lance bays on the high­way so po­lice could take quick ac­tion on re­ports of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. Warn­er met with the sev­en fi­nal­ists of the Miss T&T In­de­pen­dence pageant. The pageant takes place on Sun­day at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain.