Chester Sam­bra­no

On Ju­ly 9, Charisse Har­ris and her fam­i­ly got the shock­ing news that her fa­ther, An­tho­ny Har­ris, 60, had been knocked down while cy­cling around the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain. One day lat­er, there was even more tragedy as he suc­cumbed to his in­juries.

The dri­ver of the ve­hi­cle that hit Har­ris nev­er stopped.

Har­ris had been a pho­tog­ra­ph­er with Guardian Me­dia Ltd.

In the af­ter­math of the in­ci­dent near Pres­i­dent’s House, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob said the CCTV (Closed Cir­cuit Tele­vi­sion) cam­eras lo­cat­ed in the area where Har­ris was hit were said to be not use­ful be­cause of the qual­i­ty of the footage.

But the hurt for the fam­i­ly con­tin­ues four months lat­er, as they are yet to get jus­tice.

Now, with the an­nounce­ment on Tues­day night by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley of 2,500 ad­di­tion­al cam­eras al­ready be­ing in­stalled across the coun­try and a promise of 2,500 more, comes a plea from Har­ris’ daugh­ter Charisse.

“I be­lieve that ad­di­tion­al CCTV cam­eras will hope­ful­ly help fu­ture in­ves­ti­ga­tions. How­ev­er, the cam­eras that are in place now need to be ser­viced in or­der to add new cam­eras or re­place which ex­ists al­ready with, so they are bet­ter qual­i­ty and they work,” she said.

She told Guardian Me­dia that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to her fa­ther’s death re­mains on­go­ing but ad­mit­ted it has been a dif­fi­cult jour­ney for her fam­i­ly.

But it’s not on­ly the Har­ris fam­i­ly alone that is con­cerned about the CCTV is­sue.

At a news con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, UNC Na­pari­ma Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Rod­ney Charles ques­tioned whether the an­ti-crime ini­tia­tive was a “ma­m­aguy” to dis­tract the pop­u­la­tion.

“Did it take a whole day, an en­tire day, for the Prime Min­is­ter to iden­ti­fy that CCTV cov­er­age is nec­es­sary? Dr Row­ley’s state­ment that 2,500 CCTVs were be­ing in­stalled with a fur­ther 2,000 to come, that rang hol­low. We have been down that road be­fore,” he said.

Charles asked the Gov­ern­ment to say whether the ad­di­tion­al CCTV cam­eras would be ad­e­quate­ly main­tained and if they will be manned 24 hours a day, sev­en days a week.

In April this year, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said of the 1,796 CCTV cam­eras in­stalled through­out T&T, 733 were not ful­ly func­tion­al or are non-func­tion­al,

Hinds told the Par­lia­ment that there were plans to in­stall ad­di­tion­al cam­eras but was un­able to say what dates the 733 would be fixed.

He added that cam­eras were re­paired on a rou­tine ba­sis and made func­tion­al.

Ed­i­tor's Note: In an ear­li­er ver­sion of this sto­ry, the head­line ap­peared as though the daugh­ter of the late me­dia pho­tog­ra­ph­er had died. We apol­o­gise for this er­ror.