Carisa Lee

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi has said that the process for the im­por­ta­tion and sale of pep­per spray is in the fin­ish­ing stages as calls are con­tin­u­ing for the use of pro­tec­tive mech­a­nisms in light of the mur­ders of five women so far this year.

“I am pleased to re­port that the pep­per spray leg­is­la­tion, the reg­u­la­tions and rules for them are fi­nalised as the re­sult of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice hav­ing de­liv­ered to us two days ago the rec­om­men­da­tion that we have draft­ed for him and per­fect­ed,” Al-Rawi said yes­ter­day.

He said now that the po­lice has giv­en their in­put they can take the fi­nal steps.

An­oth­er call by cit­i­zens was for the pro­tec­tion of women when they use pub­lic trans­porta­tion, some women said they car­ry weapons, take pic­tures of the li­cense plate and don’t en­ter ve­hi­cles with all men in­side.

Al-Rawi said the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port is far ad­vanced with the re­form of the en­tire reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem of ve­hi­cles. This in­cludes the PH Taxi dri­ver sys­tem.

“There is a change out of every sin­gle num­ber plate on every sin­gle car in Trinidad and To­ba­go, that’s called the RF plates the ra­dio fre­quen­cy plates so that each tag hits a bell, in oth­er words then you’ll know as you pass­ing along the road you would know which ve­hi­cle has passed where,” he ex­plained.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (AG) said the time­frame when this will be done de­pends on a num­ber of in­te­gral el­e­ments that are all in mo­tion.

“One the dig­i­ta­tion ef­forts, two the re­place­ment of the mo­tor ve­hi­cle reg­istry, three the change out of num­ber plates and four the route con­sul­ta­tion,” he added.

But while these two mea­sures to pro­tect women are un­der­way Al-Rawi said their pro­tec­tion re­quires more.

He said the Gov­ern­ment has been beg­ging the Op­po­si­tion for sup­port on se­ri­ous is­sues that they can­not pass in Par­lia­ment alone.

“We be­lieve that part of the fight against crim­i­nal­i­ty in­clud­ing that against women is keep­ing mon­sters off the road,” he said.

Al-Rawi said he was dis­ap­point­ed in some stake­hold­er groups as well who he has writ­ten to for their in­put on cer­tain leg­is­la­tion but re­ceived no re­sponse.

“Such as whistle­blow­ing, such as tar­get­ed sex of­fend­er man­age­ment, such as bail re­stric­tion all of which have been draft­ed and sent out on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions with­out re­sponse in some quar­ters,” he said.

The AG sent con­do­lences to all the fam­i­lies who lost loved ones and said no fam­i­ly should have to go through this.

The five women to be killed this year in­clude Elza Sandy who was found dead in her Tacarigua home on Jan­u­ary 2, Shar­lene Lawrence who was shot dead in Cunu­pia one day lat­er and June Dirpaul, a 73-year-old woman who was at­tacked on De­cem­ber 31, 2021, but died at the hos­pi­tal on Jan­u­ary 6.

Tame­sha La Bar­rie, 41, was mur­dered in Port of Spain on Jan­u­ary 26 and Se­le­na Mo­hammed was shot dead one week lat­er on Feb­ru­ary 2 in her car in San Fer­nan­do.

The de­com­pos­ing body of 21-year-old Kei­thisha Cud­joe was found in the Heights of Aripo on Jan­u­ary 28.

She was iden­ti­fied by her loved one days lat­er by her cloth­ing, shoes and glass­es. An au­top­sy is yet to be done to de­ter­mine the cause of her death.