One po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist is ac­cus­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and his Gov­ern­ment of on­ly now wak­ing up from their slum­ber to deal with To­ba­go’s crime prob­lem.

Fol­low­ing a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing in To­ba­go on Tues­day, the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced a new an­ti-crime plan for the is­land. Plans to send re­in­force­ments and pro­vide train­ing for To­ba­go of­fi­cers were among the mea­sures pre­sent­ed to re­duce crime on the is­land.

Prof Hamid Ghany, how­ev­er, be­lieves there is an ul­te­ri­or mo­tive. “They know they have to do some­thing in To­ba­go be­cause it’s go­ing to hurt them po­lit­i­cal­ly.”

Al­though the meet­ing was arranged last week, it hap­pened one day af­ter the is­land’s first quadru­ple mur­der, push­ing the toll to a record high of 16.

Ghany blamed the Gov­ern­ment for al­low­ing crime in To­ba­go to fes­ter.

In his as­sess­ment of the plans pre­sent­ed, Ghany did not be­lieve To­ba­go’s record-high mur­der toll was what dis­turbed the Gov­ern­ment’s slum­ber on the mat­ter.

He told Guardian Me­dia in a phone in­ter­view, “Every­body is wak­ing up now be­cause an elec­tion is on the hori­zon, and the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment is now re­al­is­ing it has to do some­thing in To­ba­go. If it weren’t for an elec­tion, To­ba­go would not be get­ting this at­ten­tion. Whether it works or not, I do not know, but it is proof of Port-of-Spain’s ne­glect of To­ba­go.”

One of the stark in­di­ca­tors of this ne­glect, ac­cord­ing to Ghany, has been the rout­ing of E999 emer­gency calls to Trinidad in­stead of han­dling them di­rect­ly in To­ba­go. “Why did no­body think about giv­ing To­ba­go the re­al-time abil­i­ty to fight crime? All the ev­i­dence of ne­glect is there, but I hope that the an­ti-crime plan works.”

He re­ferred to the de­bate around To­ba­go’s abil­i­ty to es­tab­lish its own po­lice force, a move that he sup­port­ed. “There was a whole hul­la­baloo re­cent­ly about how To­ba­go can­not have its own po­lice force, and var­i­ous stake­hold­ers in To­ba­go were say­ing that it would be break­ing the law.

“The re­al­i­ty is that the Chief Sec­re­tary was right all along—To­ba­go has to have its own po­lice force, and the Cen­tral gov­ern­ment has now wok­en up to that fact.”

Still, Ghany sug­gests that po­lit­i­cal mo­ti­va­tions are dri­ving the Gov­ern­ment’s sud­den fo­cus on To­ba­go. “They are on­ly look­ing in­to it be­cause an elec­tion is com­ing, and the two seats in To­ba­go are crit­i­cal for the PNM. That is the dri­ving force be­hind the sud­den at­ten­tion to To­ba­go, apart from the fact that there is an up­surge of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, which the crime plan­ners ought to have fore­seen with the up­surge of crime and gang vi­o­lence in Trinidad. It was on­ly a mat­ter of time un­til it spread to To­ba­go.”

Duke: Meet­ing was a show

For PDP leader Wat­son Duke, the meet­ing was a great show for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion be­tween the chief sec­re­tary and the prime min­is­ter af­ter their fall­out in 2023. “It was a good meet­ing for op­tics since the great ‘au­dio­gate scan­dal.’ How­ev­er, in so far as it be­ing pru­dent for the man­age­ment of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty tak­ing place in To­ba­go, I think it was not as de­sir­able as we would have ex­pect­ed it.

“There were no re­al out­comes we can look for­ward to that we can use to tell or that the pub­lic can use to as­sess whether or not the plan is work­ing. There were no spe­cif­ic tar­gets or mea­sur­able, achiev­able, or rel­e­vant out­comes. It means the peo­ple of To­ba­go are still with­out an­swers.”

Busi­ness Cham­ber

wants re­sults

Mean­while, the To­ba­go Cham­ber said they would ac­cept noth­ing but a 100 per cent de­cline in the mur­der rate over the re­main­ing five months of 2024. To­ba­go chair­man of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Cur­tis Williams, said, “My rate is it’s sup­posed to be ze­ro. We have made sure we get rid of the crim­i­nal el­e­ments that cause all these mur­ders on the is­land. I’m not go­ing to set a tar­get of five or four; it’s ze­ro. Crime is sup­posed to be at an all low which is ze­ro.”

Williams be­lieves the plan is sol­id enough to seize crim­i­nal el­e­ments and re­store safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.

Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion, Al­pha Lorde, said that with­out ac­count­abil­i­ty, the plan has no val­ue.

“If they are not go­ing to put mea­sures in place that hold the au­thor­i­ties ac­count­able for ac­tu­al­ly get­ting some­thing done, then the mea­sures have no val­ue.” Lorde said To­bag­o­ni­ans can­not be ex­pect­ed to stay calm, es­pe­cial­ly as the toll con­tin­ues to rise and ex­ist­ing mea­sures and re­cent crime plans fail to work.”

The an­ti-crime plan

The mea­sures in­clude de­ploy­ing po­lice of­fi­cers from Trinidad to To­ba­go on a ro­ta­tion­al ba­sis, in­creas­ing the pres­ence of the Guard and Emer­gency Branch and In­ter-Agency Task Force of­fi­cers, and in­stalling ad­di­tion­al CCTV cam­eras. There are al­so plans to es­tab­lish the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice head­quar­ters in Ba­co­let.