While busi­ness groups are hap­py that the 100 Vol­un­teer De­fence Force mem­bers have been called out by the Pres­i­dent for 123 days, they be­lieve this move should have come soon­er to help com­bat the up­surge in crime.

Yes­ter­day, the of­fi­cial procla­ma­tion from Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo said the move is to strength­en the De­fence Force’s ca­pa­bil­i­ty to help po­lice dur­ing the pre-Christ­mas sea­son in­to Car­ni­val 2024.

It came in­to ef­fect on Mon­day and runs un­til Feb­ru­ary 29 next year.

Fol­low­ing the Pres­i­dent’s procla­ma­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is­sued a state­ment say­ing there would be “op­er­a­tional ad­just­ments to re­spond to the vi­o­lent co­hort of the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion”.

Com­ment­ing on the move, Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Ra­mon Gre­go­rio said the Pres­i­dent’s procla­ma­tion is a much-need­ed short-term mea­sure to bring some lev­el of com­fort to cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es across the coun­try.

How­ev­er, Gre­go­rio stat­ed that the im­pact must be eval­u­at­ed at the end of the pe­ri­od to de­ter­mine if it is a sus­tain­able mech­a­nism to fight crime and if, in turn, it can be syn­chro­nised with a longer-term fo­cus.

He al­so said in­creased use and ac­cess to sur­veil­lance cam­eras, tech­nol­o­gy, and the at­ten­dant in­fra­struc­ture to not on­ly de­tect crime in re­al time but al­so pro­vide the abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly pros­e­cute of­fend­ers with prop­er ev­i­dence com­pi­la­tion and da­ta gath­er­ing are al­so bad­ly need­ed.

The cham­ber head said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty can bring for­ward cre­ative ideas and in­vest­ment to take back con­trol of the com­mu­ni­ties.

Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers chair­man Vivek Char­ran al­so wel­comed the vol­un­teers lend­ing sup­port to the TTPS, but ques­tioned why this was not done be­fore.

“The pos­si­bil­i­ty re­mains that had it been done ear­li­er it could have saved lives or at least pre­vent­ed some crimes from oc­cur­ring. Nev­er­the­less, we hope this new de­vel­op­ment will pro­vide a lev­el of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty for cit­i­zens,” Char­ran lament­ed.

Mooti­lal Ram­s­ingh, pres­i­dent of the Pe­nal-Debe Cham­ber of Com­merce in­di­cat­ed that this move brings some de­gree of com­fort to both cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es, more so as Christ­mas and Car­ni­val ap­proach­es.

He said, “Mer­chants and busi­ness­es need to op­er­ate in a con­ducive en­vi­ron­ment that en­sures both safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures are be­ing put in place for com­mu­ni­ties and busi­ness­es.”

Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments was Emer­son Chadee, pres­i­dent of the Siparia Cham­ber of Com­merce.

He said the cham­ber was hope­ful that prop­er op­er­a­tional plan­ning and ex­e­cu­tion would take place first to en­sure a very ef­fec­tive readi­ness against the crim­i­nal el­e­ment es­pe­cial­ly as the Christ­mas sea­son nears and there is in­creased eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

Pres­i­dent of the Fyz­abad Cham­ber of Com­merce Ang­ie Jairam al­so weighed in say­ing that it was “un­for­tu­nate that so many lives have dis­ap­peared, fam­i­lies bro­ken for­ev­er, com­mu­ni­ties un­der siege, and a na­tion un­der blood”.

She added that “this small but ex­cel­lent ef­fort in the right di­rec­tion tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment is a great start to bring back this coun­try from the calami­ties caused by crime”. How­ev­er, she said more had to be done.

“This ac­tion of beef­ing up the man­pow­er in the De­fence Force can­not be the on­ly ac­tion, we must al­so make our jus­tice sys­tem more ef­fec­tive in deal­ing with crime. The so­cial root caus­es of this dis­or­der called crime must be ad­dressed. The val­ues of chil­dren must be up­lift­ed, fam­i­lies should be able to fos­ter a good life to sup­port each oth­er, and there must be good lead­er­ship in com­mu­ni­ties.”

Rashid Ali, pres­i­dent of the Cunu­pia Busi­ness Cham­ber said, “It is a good idea to have the army come out and sup­port the TTPS, but the coun­try needs more army per­son­nel to be de­ployed na­tion­al­ly, and it must be on a sus­tained ba­sis.”

Cap­tain George Alex­is, pres­i­dent of the Point Fortin Cham­ber said fight­ing crime re­quired much wider stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions, (busi­ness, civ­il so­ci­ety, var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties, the IRO, and sub­ject mat­ter ex­perts in se­cu­ri­ty).

Mean­while, Ri­car­do Mo­hammed, pres­i­dent of the East­ern Busi­ness Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion said Gov­ern­ment has to “im­prove its per­for­mance con­cern­ing crime-fight­ing, en­sur­ing much more reg­u­lar pa­trols, both foot and ve­hic­u­lar, util­is­ing the na­tion’s avi­a­tion as­sets (he­li­copters) to con­duct more sur­veil­lance op­er­a­tions and the op­ti­mum use of in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing to mit­i­gate crime and es­pe­cial­ly mur­ders”.

Mo­hammed said there must be ro­bust leg­is­la­tion to deal with dis­man­tling gangs and re­duc­ing ex­tor­tion.