PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi says the spate of road­blocks across the coun­try yes­ter­day were “a part of polic­ing” and was nec­es­sary to deal with the scourge of crime.

“Road­blocks, yes, we have a very ag­gres­sive and ac­tive Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice,” the AG dur­ing the Min­istry of Health’s COVID-19 vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

He as­sured that the Gov­ern­ment was not in the dark about the ac­tions of the po­lice, which caused mas­sive traf­fic grid­locks across the coun­try.

“Road­blocks are a fea­ture of polic­ing. And in this time of dif­fer­ent man­age­ment of the pop­u­la­tion, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice did say quite some time ago ex­pect road­blocks, ex­pect ac­tiv­i­ties as such as this,” he said.

“Notwith­stand­ing the very best ef­forts of Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens as a whole, res­i­dents as a whole, there are peo­ple who are de­ter­mined to con­tin­ue with crim­i­nal­i­ty, which means the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the Gov­ern­ment have kept a very keen eye on ac­tiv­i­ties.

“Yes it’s a fea­ture of COVID, why is it go­ing on, it’s just gen­er­al polic­ing and we are in­tent on deal­ing with the scourge of crim­i­nal­i­ty in this so­ci­ety at all mea­sures.”

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al al­so ad­dressed con­cerns that some min­istries may have been call­ing out work­ers who have lit­tle to do cur­rent­ly, yet are deemed es­sen­tial.

“Min­istries are all es­sen­tial work­ers and the pub­lic ser­vice, the large por­tion of the pub­lic ser­vice, has been cap­tured by that. What we did as a Gov­ern­ment is that we ad­min­is­tra­tive­ly had each of the per­ma­nent sec­re­taries, heads of di­vi­sions, man­age staff on a ro­ta­tion­al ba­sis.

“It de­pends up­on work­load, peo­ple who have risks, peo­ple who have re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. So there’s been a very flu­id and flex­i­ble ap­proach in the pub­lic ser­vice to this,” he said.

He added, “It is im­por­tant, some­times some­one may not con­sid­er that they are an es­sen­tial ser­vice, but tell the per­son who has to re­ceive a cheque at the end of the month for COVID re­lief that that cheque is not im­por­tant and you’ll find a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion. So we don’t ex­pect that every­one is go­ing to be hap­py about the ro­ta­tion, we know that the pub­lic ser­vice is un­der con­stant watch.”

Al-Rawi al­so said a lev­el of eval­u­a­tion was be­ing done with re­gard to those work­ing from home at this time.

“Each of the min­istries are in the process of mea­sur­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the re­mote en­vi­ron­ment, so we’re be­ing very care­ful so that we can check the work­flow on the work at home ba­sis as we en­sure that peo­ple are get­ting their dol­lars’ worth from pay­ing us as pub­lic ser­vants for what we do,” he said.