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Monday, February 17, 2025

40 more officers to boost Predial Larceny Squad 

by

RADHICA DE SILVA
752 days ago
20230126
FILE PHOTO - This photo dated 29 January 2020, shows members of the Praedial Larceny Squad—PC Thomas and WPC Taylor-Ali—along with Cpl Jeffers (centre), examining a truck bed filled with stolen citrus fruit.

FILE PHOTO - This photo dated 29 January 2020, shows members of the Praedial Larceny Squad—PC Thomas and WPC Taylor-Ali—along with Cpl Jeffers (centre), examining a truck bed filled with stolen citrus fruit.

 

Faced with mas­sive loss­es caused by a rise in prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, farm­ers across the coun­try have been beg­ging for re­lief say­ing more of­fi­cers should be hired to sup­ple­ment the Pre­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad.

And while TTPS of­fi­cers have pro­vid­ed some pa­trols, farm­ers in far-flung ar­eas such as Sec­ond Co­r­i­al Palmyra, RE Road, Los Iros and Williamsville say many of them have left farm­ing be­cause of lar­ce­ny.

How­ev­er, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein is now as­sur­ing farm­ers that the Pre­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad will be boost­ed by 40 more of­fi­cers and three new ve­hi­cles.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions on large-scale loot­ing of farm­ers' crops and live­stock in the Sen­ate Cham­ber on Wednes­day af­ter­noon, Ho­sein said strength­en­ing the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Unit to pro­tect farm­ers re­mains a pri­or­i­ty.

He plead­ed with thieves to "raise your own live­stock and plant your own crops" rather than steal from hard-work­ing farm­ers.

“It takes farm­ers months and years to mind and sell these an­i­mals and peo­ple com­ing to loot; I am ap­peal­ing to those in­tent on com­mit­ting il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties to leave the farmer's stock alone, go mind your an­i­mals, and plant your own," Ho­sein said.

He not­ed that his Min­istry staff is work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to ad­dress the Unit's is­sues and as­sured the pub­lic "I am on top of it."

The Min­is­ter re­vealed that in the medi­um term, he in­tends to hire 40 more of­fi­cers to boost the Squad.

Fur­ther dis­cus­sions with the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion for ad­di­tion­al staffing, will con­tin­ue, he added.

Em­pha­siz­ing the im­por­tance of build­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of the Squad, Ho­sein said this will be done based on the avail­abil­i­ty of fund­ing.

He agreed with farm­ers that there was a crit­i­cal need for of­fi­cers to be able to ef­fi­cient­ly re­spond to calls by farm­ers.

He al­so re­vealed three new ful­ly equipped ve­hi­cles will be pur­chased for use by the Squad.

"It is an­tic­i­pat­ed that these will im­prove the abil­i­ty of of­fi­cers to con­duct pa­trols," Ho­sein said.

He al­so added that de­spite the con­straints, they are em­ploy­ing in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions.

“Due to height­ened il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty im­pact­ing our farm­ers, the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad has been uti­liz­ing its con­nec­tions with the TTPS, Trinidad and To­ba­go Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice (TTMPS) and the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EM­BD) Po­lice to re­spond and as­sist," he ex­plained.

He al­so gave the as­sur­ance that all con­cerns made by the Squad will be ad­dressed.

Since May last year, for­mer TTPS Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer Sheri­don Hill has been warn­ing of an in­crease in pre­di­al lar­ce­ny re­ports.

MP for Moru­ga, Michelle Ben­jamin al­so said 50 per cent of the peo­ple in her con­stituen­cy were in­volved in farm­ing and prae­di­al lar­ce­ny has been a big prob­lem since the Unit went down.

She said farm­ers from La Sa­vanne, Table­land Pineap­ple pro­duc­ers, Cun­jal Food Crop farm­ers, as well as farm­ers from Moru­ga, have all been hard hit by lar­ce­ny but when farm­ers re­port lar­ce­ny to the po­lice, there is lit­tle re­sponse.

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