The Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) wel­comes the State of Emer­gency (SoE) as a method to re­duce crime.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side the Cham­ber’s Cum­ber­batch Street of­fices, CCIC head Bal­dath Ma­haraj said the Cham­ber has been call­ing for a SoE for the longest while.

He said, “It's wel­comed by the busi­ness­men and more so the en­tire board of the CCIC.” 

Ma­haraj said the armed forces should ex­er­cise cau­tion.

“The last time one was done, it cost us tax­pay­ers a lot of mon­ey and we should ex­er­cise some lev­el of cau­tion to en­sure that when we con­duct those search­es and ar­rests it con­firms with the laws of T&T. A lot of those who were ar­rest­ed were not charged and the state had to pay a lot of mon­ey to­wards them.”

Ma­haraj said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty does not mind the dis­rup­tion caused by the SoE.

“If it (crime) con­tin­ues in this way it would af­fect our lives and liveli­hood. Ma­haraj said he hopes the armed forces may be able to go in, do search­es and dis­man­tle net­works, re­cov­er arms and am­mu­ni­tion and de­vices used to ex­tort busi­ness­men.

Ma­haraj said the CCIC would like to see the SoE run as long as pos­si­ble to get the job done.

He added that the SoE should put some mea­sure of con­trol on the pre-Car­ni­val crime wave.

"As we go in­to the New Year a lot of peo­ple would want to set­tle scores and we know that there have been around 20 mur­ders in the past few days and with that come reprisal killings. Go­ing for­ward in­to Car­ni­val, crim­i­nals need mon­ey to spend at their whim and fan­cy and they ob­vi­ous­ly have to get it from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as well as the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion at large."