Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, in his maid­en speech to­day, ad­mit­ted that the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has not been ef­fec­tive in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the pub­lic.

Speak­ing at the Na­tion­al Drug Coun­cil’s Pil­lar Talk, the new­ly ap­point­ed Min­is­ter praised his pre­de­ces­sor, Fitzger­ald Hinds, for his ef­forts but not­ed that pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion was an area in need of im­prove­ment.

“First, again, let me thank him for the four years of hard work that he has done in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. I had a long han­dover ses­sion with him up to late yes­ter­day evening. And I must say that based on what I dis­cov­ered, I recog­nise that per­haps the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has not been com­mu­ni­cat­ing ef­fec­tive­ly with the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion. This is ex­act­ly what I plan to im­prove mov­ing for­ward. As long as we pro­vide all the nec­es­sary re­sources to State agen­cies to com­bat and push back against the crim­i­nal el­e­ment,” Gon­za­les said.

With his ap­point­ment on Mon­day af­ter­noon and the elec­tion date be­ing an­nounced less than 24 hours lat­er, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les said this would not de­ter him from car­ry­ing out his du­ties.

“The hold­ing of the gen­er­al elec­tion is un­doubt­ed­ly im­por­tant at this time. How­ev­er, I am not go­ing to be dis­tract­ed by April 28th be­cause every sin­gle day presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to sup­press crime, gang ac­tiv­i­ties, and oth­er forms of crim­i­nal be­hav­iour in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“My dis­cus­sions with the heads of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty are not fo­cused on the elec­tion date but rather on en­sur­ing that all re­sources of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Gov­ern­ment are di­rect­ed to­ward re­duc­ing crime across the coun­try. While I ac­knowl­edge that the elec­tion date has been an­nounced, my pri­or­i­ty re­mains the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of our cit­i­zens.”

With the dis­so­lu­tion of Par­lia­ment sig­nalling that the State of Emer­gency would not be re­newed, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les said plans are in place to sus­tain the fight against crime.

He ex­plained, “We are al­ready prepar­ing for the post-State of Emer­gency pe­ri­od. Last night, we con­clud­ed a meet­ing at 9.30 pm at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, which in­clud­ed the head of the SSA, the head of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, and the head of the De­fence Force, Vice Mar­shal Dar­rell Daniel.”

He stressed the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing mo­men­tum to com­bat crime and en­sure na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

The Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, who pre­vi­ous­ly served as Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, said his ap­proach will be guid­ed by strong man­age­ment struc­tures.

“The prin­ci­ples of man­age­ment re­main con­sis­tent—hold­ing peo­ple ac­count­able, in­clud­ing man­agers. That is the foun­da­tion of our ap­proach. I just had an­oth­er con­ver­sa­tion with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice as a fol­low-up to last night’s dis­cus­sions, and we are now fo­cus­ing on a di­vi­sion­al lev­el. The con­cerns in the West­ern Di­vi­sion, for in­stance, may dif­fer from those in North­east, Cen­tral, or South­west Di­vi­sion, where is­sues like hu­man traf­fick­ing are more promi­nent. Our strat­e­gy is to ad­dress crime at the di­vi­sion­al lev­el, en­sur­ing that di­vi­sion­al man­agers are held ac­count­able for their re­spec­tive ar­eas,” he ex­plained.