GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Bal­dath Ma­haraj has added his voice to the call for a state of emer­gency (SoE) to the im­ple­ment­ed hotspots through­out the coun­try.

This comes af­ter for­mer pres­i­dent of the Pe­nal/Debe Cham­ber of Com­merce, Ram­per­sad Sieu­raj, was at­tacked and robbed at his home in the ear­ly hours of Oc­to­ber 19.

Dur­ing the 30 minute or­deal, the at­tack­ers placed a gun to his fore­head and threat­ened to shoot him. 

They stole his mon­ey and jew­ellery be­fore es­cap­ing.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day Ma­haraj agreed that the time had come for a lim­it­ed SoE in cer­tain ar­eas.

"Of course we will call for a state of emer­gency but on­ly lim­it­ed in crime hot spots and some­thing that would not af­fect busi­ness­es in gen­er­al. A state of emer­gency tends to go with a cur­few and there is al­ways some re­duc­tion in re­tail busi­ness and that is not good for our mem­bers ei­ther way. But we will in fact sup­port a state of emer­gency in crime hot spots and some­thing that will ben­e­fit us in the long term as it re­lates to crime re­duc­tion and even in the short term as well," he ex­plained.

The Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber pres­i­dent al­so spoke out on how ex­tor­tion con­tin­ues to af­fect its mem­bers.

He said while larg­er mem­bers are not af­fect­ed, the small­er ones are of­ten tar­get­ed.

"Those who tra­verse the road­way on a dai­ly ba­sis and who have to be in their busi­ness eight to four, those are the ones who are af­fect­ed to the ex­tent that they re­ceive calls from un­known num­bers and known num­bers as well. But those num­bers are not re­al­ly tied to any one and that is what the po­lice have been say­ing to us.

"Just un­der ten per cent of our mem­bers have re­port­ed to us there are threats of ex­tor­tion and that has been hap­pen­ing for the last three years and we have been talk­ing about it all the time," Ma­haraj said.

He de­scribed many of his mem­bers as be­ing "scared" to go to the po­lice.

"Sim­ply be­cause they be­lieve the po­lice are part of this ex­tor­tion rack­et. I am not say­ing that they are but the per­cep­tion of the mem­bers is that they (po­lice) are part of it and they are scared to go di­rect­ly to the po­lice," Ma­haraj added.

He added that al­leged vic­tims of ex­tor­tion are al­so afraid to speak to mem­bers of the me­dia about their re­port­ed or­deals, even anony­mous­ly.