Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der is again re­fus­ing to dis­close the pro­ject­ed cost or con­trac­tors for the Gov­ern­ment’s planned 30 po­lice posts, say­ing the in­for­ma­tion will be made pub­lic at a lat­er stage to avoid “dra­ma.”

Speak­ing with re­porters fol­low­ing a cer­e­mo­ny mark­ing the re­lo­ca­tion of the Princes Town Fire Sta­tion yes­ter­day, Alexan­der main­tained there was “noth­ing to hide from the pub­lic,” but said he was not pre­pared to pro­vide de­tails on the ex­pen­di­ture at this time.

Asked specif­i­cal­ly about the cost of the ini­tia­tive, Alexan­der said the price of in­di­vid­ual posts could vary de­pend­ing on their lo­ca­tion.

“Well, as I said be­fore, all these things will be giv­en even­tu­al­ly. Be­cause as soon as we start, it’s a set of dra­ma. So what we’ll do, we’ll give all that in­for­ma­tion. There’s noth­ing to hide from the pub­lic,” Alexan­der said.

He said once con­trac­tors were se­lect­ed through the pro­cure­ment process, there should be no is­sue with dis­clos­ing the in­for­ma­tion.

“If we chose some­one to do some­thing be­cause there was a pro­cure­ment and all of that, then there are no is­sues.”

The Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) has al­so been asked to in­ves­ti­gate the pro­cure­ment process sur­round­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of the 30 po­lice posts.

Alexan­der al­so de­clined to re­veal the lo­ca­tions of six of the pro­posed posts, say­ing au­thor­i­ties were con­sid­er­ing where they could pro­vide the great­est strate­gic ad­van­tage to law en­force­ment in tack­ling crime.

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter con­firmed that the first three posts ex­pect­ed to be­come op­er­a­tional are at Tarou­ba, Grand Bazaar and Ed­die Hart.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was await­ing fi­nal in­for­ma­tion from Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and Chief of De­fence Staff (CDS) Com­modore Don Po­lo be­fore giv­ing a clear­er time­line.

“I’m wait­ing on the Com­mis­sion­er and the CDS to give me the fi­nal. But it should take place. We’re look­ing to go through the In­de­pen­dence [Day], and af­ter that, we’ll go for­ward in a more pos­i­tive way,” Alexan­der said.

Trinidad and To­ba­go cel­e­brates its In­de­pen­dence on Au­gust 31.

Asked whether the first three posts would be op­er­a­tional be­fore Christ­mas, Alexan­der sug­gest­ed the pub­lic may not have to wait that long.

“It might be soon­er than you think,” he said.

Alexan­der said the ini­tia­tive was ul­ti­mate­ly about pro­vid­ing a greater se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence.

“It’s about ser­vice to the peo­ple. It’s about pro­tect­ing pub­lic spaces and so on. And who doesn’t want that? There are peo­ple who don’t want it, but we are about giv­ing it to the peo­ple.”

Alexan­der al­so pushed back against crit­i­cism of the pro­posed posts, in­sist­ing there was grow­ing de­mand for them and ar­gu­ing that sim­i­lar units were be­ing used in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to sup­port law en­force­ment.

“We are mak­ing a gen­uine ef­fort to en­sure, be­cause the de­mand is so great, be­cause the more per­sons try to de­nounce it and make it look like it is not im­por­tant, the de­mand con­tin­ues to grow,” he said.

Alexan­der point­ed to Sin­ga­pore and the Unit­ed King­dom as ex­am­ples of ju­ris­dic­tions where mo­bile units were be­ing utilised to bol­ster se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions.

“Go look at it and you will re­alise the im­por­tance of how they are us­ing these units now, these mo­bile units, to sup­port the agen­cies in the fight against crime.”

He al­so took aim at crit­ics who have ques­tioned whether the posts would be ef­fec­tive, sug­gest­ing some peo­ple who con­sid­ered them­selves se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts had failed to prop­er­ly as­sess their po­ten­tial val­ue.

“For those who felt with­in them­selves the urge to speak be­cause they are con­sid­ered by them­selves to be se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts, I think they did not per­form a very good analy­sis of those mo­bile units,” Alexan­der said.

The Gov­ern­ment has main­tained that the 30 posts are in­tend­ed to in­crease the vis­i­bil­i­ty of law en­force­ment and strength­en the se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence at strate­gic lo­ca­tions across the coun­try.