Shas­tri Boodan

Se­cu­ri­ty at the ports in T&T must be ur­gent­ly placed un­der the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, says Richie Sookhai, pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC).

Sookhai, lament­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob's state­ment that the ma­jor­i­ty of the guns are com­ing in from the le­gal ports of en­try, said that Cus­toms and Ex­cise should be re­moved from the purview of the Fi­nance Min­istry and im­me­di­ate­ly placed un­der Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty "to weed out cor­rup­tion."

He was speak­ing on Fri­day night when the CCIC held its Busi­ness Mix­er func­tion at the Sig­na­ture Hall, Mon­trose, Ch­agua­nas.

He raised ques­tions about the sta­tus of the scan­ners at the port. "The US Gov­ern­ment had do­nat­ed scan­ners to be in­stalled at the ports, are they in op­er­a­tion? Cus­toms of­fi­cers have a mam­moth role to play in curb­ing the im­por­ta­tion of these il­le­gal con­tra­band in­to T&T."

 Sookhai said it was no se­cret that for over a year hun­dreds of CCTV cam­eras through­out the coun­try were not work­ing. "That's like know­ing there's can­cer and not seek­ing im­me­di­ate treat­ment. Since the kid­nap­ping of An­drea Bhar­rat, the po­lice in­di­cat­ed the cam­eras in Ari­ma were non-func­tion­al. Why didn't the Gov­ern­ment act to bring on board busi­ness­es and res­i­dents from day one? We could have had a na­tion­al CCTV Eye al­ready in place if there was the quick­er im­ple­men­ta­tion of a plan."

He called on the Gov­ern­ment to sit with busi­ness heads and cham­bers and dis­cuss bring­ing cor­po­rate/res­i­den­tial CCTV on­to the na­tion­al grid, adding that leg­is­la­tion may have to be passed to utilise footage from civil­ian cam­eras in the courts.

Sookhai said the root cause of crime stems from the so­cio-eco­nom­ic prob­lems that ex­ist.

"What is fu­elling gang cul­ture? What hap­pens to the thou­sands of pri­ma­ry school chil­dren who score un­der 30 per cent at SEA and the ad­di­tion­al hun­dreds who nev­er make it to CXC, what pro­grammes are in place to coach them dur­ing the ages of 12-18?"

The CCIC head said there are many bro­ken sin­gle-par­ent homes in de­pressed ar­eas as the sit­u­a­tion with fa­ther­less young men has be­come en­dem­ic.

Not­ing that the ma­jor­i­ty of vi­o­lent crimes and gun of­fences are com­mit­ted by re­peat of­fend­ers, he asked, what pro­grammes are in place for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

"Do crim­i­nals just sit in jail and eat all day at the tax­pay­ers' ex­pense while they use their cell phones to con­tin­ue their crim­i­nal net­work­ing?

"You can have in­creased judges and mas­ters, but the prob­lem is that cas­es are al­ways be­ing ad­journed and stretch­ing out to years."

The CCIC pres­i­dent called for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of night and week­end courts to ex­pe­dite gun-re­lat­ed of­fences.