Michelle Loubon

Re­demp­tion Chris­t­ian Cen­tre pas­tor Dr Vic­tor Gill has called on the Gov­ern­ment to show some eq­ui­ty and stop the se­cu­ri­ty forces from fo­cussing their at­ten­tion dur­ing the state of emer­gency on one com­mu­ni­ty. In an in­ter­view last week, Gill even made ref­er­ence to the cal­lous man­ner in which the young men were tak­en and dumped in the back of po­lice truck. Gill said: "It looks as though it is bias in the eth­nic sense, and, in terms of class. They have gone to the weak­est and poor­est. What about all down in South and Pe­nal. All these places did not get cur­few. Had it been South or West­moor­ings, would those young men have been treat­ed like that?"

Gill warned if these mat­ters were not han­dled prop­er­ly it could "spill over and cre­ate more an­ar­chy in T&T." He added: "Show some eq­ui­ty and search some homes in West­moor­ings. Even the peo­ple in the Beetham know there is a ques­tion mark hang­ing over that part of the coun­try. "The man­ner in which it is be­ing done could cre­ate more re­sent­ment. It is a na­tion­al state of emer­gency. They just put the cur­few in cer­tain ar­eas. That does not ap­pear to make much sense." Gill ex­pressed a pre­vail­ing sen­ti­ment that ban­dits could tem­porar­i­ly mi­grate to ar­eas which are not deemed "hot spots."

He said: "The ban­dits could hang out there and no­body could trou­ble them. Why leave out ten per cent of T&T?" He said the lock­down may have been lim­it­ed for some prac­ti­cal rea­son. "As it ap­pears, it's ques­tion­able. I don't know if there is some covert rea­son," he said. Pas­tor Gill said he was call­ing up­on the cit­i­zen­ry and pas­tors and lead­ers from Full Gospel and Evan­gel­i­cal church­es to join him in a na­tion­al day of prayer.