Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

For ven­dors at the Ed­die Hart Food Vil­lage, the de­bate over Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed joint po­lice and army posts is not about pol­i­tics; it is about sur­vival.

Af­ter more than a decade of sell­ing dou­bles at the food vil­lage, ven­dor Sunil Lal­la says he has wit­nessed enough crime in the area to wel­come a per­ma­nent se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Lal­la said ven­dors and cus­tomers have been vic­tims of stab­bings, purse snatch­ing, ve­hi­cle break-ins and rob­beries.

He re­called be­ing held up at gun­point in broad day­light.

Lal­la said the pro­posed joint po­lice and army post at the Ed­die Hart Sa­van­nah would pro­vide much-need­ed re­as­sur­ance for ven­dors and cus­tomers, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause most trans­ac­tions at the food vil­lage in­volve cash.

“Peo­ple that shop and live around here, they will feel more com­fort­able. They will feel more safe.”

But con­struc­tion of the post has now been halt­ed, af­ter the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion raised con­cerns about whether the nec­es­sary ap­provals had been ob­tained.

Lal­la says what­ev­er ap­provals are re­quired should be se­cured quick­ly so con­struc­tion can re­sume.

His fel­low ven­dor, Chan­dra Singh, shared that view.

Singh said res­i­dents and ven­dors would wel­come po­lice and army per­son­nel in the area, say­ing their pres­ence would pro­vide a greater sense of se­cu­ri­ty.

“Of course we will wel­come that. We will feel more safe and we love po­lice and army pres­ence here,” she said.

Singh does not sup­port the de­ci­sion to halt con­struc­tion, but says the Gov­ern­ment should sim­ply ob­tain what­ev­er ap­provals are nec­es­sary and get the project mov­ing again.

“If there is some­thing nec­es­sary, they have to get ap­proval, then get it and let’s get ahead with the po­lice and army pres­ence,” she said.

The pro­posed post at Ed­die Hart is part of Gov­ern­ment’s plan to es­tab­lish joint po­lice and army op­er­a­tional bases across the coun­try, from which com­bined pa­trols will be con­duct­ed.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced 24 lo­ca­tions on Mon­day, with an­oth­er six ex­pect­ed to be iden­ti­fied.

Gov­ern­ment in­tends to have the posts es­tab­lished over the next four months as part of its crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy.

The Prime Min­is­ter sub­se­quent­ly ac­cused the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion of show­ing “ha­tred” to­wards the peo­ple of Tu­na­puna by stop­ping con­struc­tion at Ed­die Hart.

But while that po­lit­i­cal dis­pute con­tin­ues, con­struc­tion is still tak­ing place at an­oth­er pro­posed lo­ca­tion be­neath the Grand Bazaar over­pass.

There, pub­lic re­ac­tion is more cau­tious.

David Isaac be­lieves the posts could help, but ar­gues that the Gov­ern­ment must ad­dress deep­er prob­lems with­in the polic­ing sys­tem if it wants to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce crime.

“It might help the crime. But to stop the crime, you have to start from on top,” Isaac said.

He ques­tioned the ef­fec­tive­ness of sim­ply in­creas­ing the vis­i­bil­i­ty of po­lice ve­hi­cles and of­fi­cers across the coun­try, ar­gu­ing that greater po­lice pres­ence does not nec­es­sar­i­ly pre­vent vi­o­lent crime.