Gail Alexan­der

Se­cu­ri­ty forces have un­earthed an un­der­ground bunker con­tain­ing 80,000 gal­lons of diesel fu­el with­in a scrap iron yard, and al­so found an Ital­ian high- pow­ered ri­fle and an am­mu­ni­tion belt-fed ma­chine gun, says Hous­ing and En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. Leader of House Busi­ness Mooni­lal gave the in­for­ma­tion dur­ing yes­ter­day's House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the state of emer­gency. Mooni­lal said up to yes­ter­day, 1,356 peo­ple had been de­tained by se­cu­ri­ty forces. He said 33 firearms had been seized and 1,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion have been found to date.

"The state of emer­gency is work­ing...There are chal­lenges but we go ahead," he added. Mooni­lal said the guns found yes­ter­day in­clud­ed an Ital­ian made "high-pow­ered" ri­fle as well as a ma­chine gun that op­er­at­ed with am­mu­ni­tion fed from a belt. He added that the lat­ter gun can spray bul­lets wide­ly and kill many peo­ple. Mooni­lal al­so said that al­though scrap iron deal­ers had com­plained about the re­moval of their ma­te­ri­als, se­cu­ri­ty forces have un­cov­ered an un­der­ground bunker con­tain­ing 80,000 gal­lons of diesel fu­el.

Mooni­lal said the fu­el was be­ing ex­port­ed il­le­gal­ly. He said many scrap iron yards are il­le­gal and had al­so been used to hide weapons and oth­er il­le­gal sub­stances among the pieces of iron. Mooni­lal said while the buried fu­el could have been there be­fore May 24, 2010 - when the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship won the elec­tion-the army could not have found the buried diesel with­out the pow­ers of search they held un­der the cur­rent state of emer­gency. He said po­lice had al­so foiled a car steal­ing gang in the last 48 hours. He said stolen cars were usu­al­ly used in homi­cides.

He said the 1,356 peo­ple held so far were "1,356 rea­sons" for the state of emer­gency and the 1,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion and 33 guns seized were sim­i­lar rea­sons for the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. "Thir­ty-three guns can kill 500 peo­ple, 1000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion found has saved 1,000 lives-we shouldn't take this light­ly," he added. Mooni­lal dis­missed Op­po­si­tion calls for the Gov­ern­ment to present "big fish" in its net. Say­ing "lit­tle fish "of­ten led to the "big fish," Mooni­lal added that "the king­pins" did not wear Ar­mani suits and of­ten had av­er­age ve­hi­cles to keep off the radar. He said on­ly one "big fish" had been caught and ex­e­cut­ed in pre­vi­ous years.

Mooni­lal said the Op­po­si­tion's con­cerns about po­lit­i­cal dis­si­dents or artistes be­ing tar­get­ed in the state of emer­gency were un­found­ed since crim­i­nals were the ob­jec­tive. He said trade unions were al­so con­tin­u­ing in­dus­tri­al ac­tion at San­ta Flo­ra and Petrotrin and were speak­ing out on their is­sues dur­ing the state of emer­gency. "There's no clam­p­down on them and po­lice aren't go­ing to seize them," he added. Mooni­lal said even dur­ing the state of emer­gency peo­ple were still freely crit­i­cis­ing the Gov­ern­ment on ra­dio and there was no sup­pres­sion.

Say­ing the Gov­er­ment could not have wait­ed fur­ther and want­ed to deal with the crime and homi­cide sit­u­a­tion ear­ly in his term, the min­is­ter said: "How many bar­rels of blood would have been spilled if we had wait­ed? How many more should have died be­fore Gov­ern­ment act­ed?" He said peo­ple were feel­ing as though they were on va­ca­tion be­cause of the peace the state of emer­gency had brought. Mooni­lal said ul­ti­mate­ly, the pub­lic would de­cide whether the Gov­ern­ment was right or wrong with the state of emer­gency. He said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will go down in his­to­ry and "the peo­ple will owe her a debt of grat­i­tude" for be­ing coura­geous enough to have in­sti­tut­ed the state of emer­gency."