KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly sup­ports the new­ly de­clared State of Emer­gency (SoE) but hopes it de­liv­ers mean­ing­ful re­sults this time.

Speak­ing dur­ing a Face­book Live press con­fer­ence Fri­day, Au­gus­tine said, “This is re­al­ly and tru­ly To­ba­go mak­ing a sac­ri­fice yet again for the se­cu­ri­ty, peace, safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the en­tire coun­try and I don't want to be dis­ap­point­ed as I was the last time.”

Au­gus­tine said he still sup­ports de­ci­sive, tar­get­ed ac­tion in re­sponse to se­ri­ous threats. He added, how­ev­er, that the gov­ern­ment must use the pe­ri­od to bring charges and se­cure con­vic­tions.

“I want the gov­ern­ment to use this as an op­por­tu­ni­ty where we have sus­pend­ed the rights of in­di­vid­u­als to re­al­ly get at those who are crim­i­nal­ly mind­ed and who have been plot­ting to desta­bilise the coun­try,” he said. “There must be a rad­i­cal re­sponse dur­ing this time.”

Au­gus­tine con­firmed he met with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie on Fri­day morn­ing to dis­cuss the gov­ern­ment’s in­tel­li­gence and the ra­tio­nale for the SoE. He con­trast­ed this with the pre­vi­ous SoE in De­cem­ber, where no one in the Cab­i­net con­sult­ed the THA in ad­vance.

"It is un­for­tu­nate that in 2025, Trinidad and To­ba­go is still grap­pling with the is­sue of cell phones in pris­ons," Au­gus­tine lament­ed. "We should have been at a place where we were us­ing the tech­nol­o­gy to pre­vent the use of cel­lu­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion in our pris­ons but clear­ly we are not there yet and peo­ple be­hind bars have been able to use the tech­nol­o­gy to ac­tu­al­ly af­fect harm on pris­on­ers who are out­side, on or­di­nary cit­i­zens, on cit­i­zens who are good cit­i­zens and so that is­sue has to be dealt with. "

The Chief Sec­re­tary said the SoE would again im­pact To­ba­go’s al­ready frag­ile tourism in­dus­try. The To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed that can­cel­la­tions came “fast and fu­ri­ous” the last time an SoE was de­clared.

Au­gus­tine said, “British Air­ways re­spond­ed the last time around... and so we are ex­pect­ing a sim­i­lar re­sponse this time.”

He said the THA will meet on Sun­day with na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty heads and stake­hold­ers in tourism and busi­ness to dis­cuss sup­port mech­a­nisms and se­cu­ri­ty plan­ning.

De­spite con­cerns about in­ter-is­land mi­gra­tion of crim­i­nal el­e­ments, Au­gus­tine urged calm. “To­ba­go re­mains safe,” he said. “We just have to en­sure that we have a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus in To­ba­go that is ef­fi­cient and re­spon­sive to our needs.”