Gail Alexan­der

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), which re­cent­ly ac­quired an ad­di­tion­al 1,000 more body cam­eras for use by of­fi­cers, is cur­rent­ly dis­trib­ut­ing the equip­ment.

This brings to 1,160 the to­tal num­ber of body­cams which the TTPS has and more will be ac­quired.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds gave this in­for­ma­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day.

He was re­ply­ing to a query from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards, who sought an up­date on the ac­qui­si­tion of body cam­eras for use by TTPS.

Hinds said, “It is note­wor­thy that pri­or to this re­cent ac­qui­si­tion (of 1,000 body­cams), the TTPS al­ready had 160 func­tion­al body cam­eras in use. Al­to­geth­er, there­fore, po­lice now have 1,160 body cam­eras and these have; and are be­ing de­ployed to max­i­mum strate­gic ef­fect across the TTPS in the fight against crime and in the spir­it of trans­paren­cy.”

On if there were plans to get more to sup­ply the TTPS’ 6,000-odd of­fi­cers, Hinds said, “Ab­solute­ly, yes. I couldn’t say with greater speci­fici­ty (how many more in­tend­ed in to­tal) but more are in con­tem­pla­tion and we’ll con­tin­ue to ex­pand the use of body cam­eras and the am­bi­tion to make it a rou­tine part of polic­ing.”

Hinds couldn’t give the cost of the 1,000 ad­di­tion­al body­cams.

He said there is a pol­i­cy for use of the body­cams and that “will evolve and be re­fined as cir­cum­stances de­mand.”

On queries about fraud­u­lent vac­ci­na­tion ac­tiv­i­ty by some mem­bers of the pub­lic, mean­while, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said the min­istry of is work­ing with the TTPS to de­ter­mine the preva­lence of fraud­u­lent vac­ci­na­tion prac­tices and to take ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion.

“As of March 15, 2022, sev­en mat­ters are be­fore the TTPS, of which three per­sons were charged for con­spir­a­cy to mis­be­have in pub­lic of­fice. The four oth­er mat­ters are cur­rent­ly be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.”

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon al­so re­buked UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark on his lack of in­for­ma­tion when he asked her what mea­sures were be­ing tak­en by Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed to re­solve work­ers’ de­mands for pay­ment of out­stand­ing cost of liv­ing al­lowances.

Gopee-Scoon said, “TCL is a list­ed com­pa­ny on the T&T Trinidad Stock Ex­change (TTSE) and has been pri­va­tised since 1990! As such, the com­pa­ny hasn’t been owned or man­aged by Gov­ern­ment in any form or fash­ion for over 30 years!

“As the for­mer Ed­u­ca­tion and Re­search Of­fi­cer for the Bank and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Union, with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for work­er ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes, Sen­a­tor Mark must know that it is not with­in the re­mit of the Gov­ern­ment to ad­vise on the mea­sures be­ing tak­en by a pri­vate com­pa­ny such as TCL to re­solve is­sues re­lat­ed to col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing.”

On an­oth­er of Mark’s queries, an IMF re­port stat­ing the re­al ef­fec­tive ex­change rate was over­val­ued by 2.4 per cent, Fi­nance’s Colm Im­bert said Mark didn’t read the IMF’s oth­er line that the au­thor­i­ty prefers to main­tain the sta­tus quo on the regime. Im­bert said the PNM pre­ferred to main­tain the sta­tus quo with this and didn’t in­tend to de­val­ue the T&T cur­ren­cy.

He said there was no rea­son to, as T&T didn’t have is­sues lead­ing to a cur­ren­cy cri­sis like bal­ance of pay­ment prob­lems.

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