Head of the Cou­va-Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce Ram­c­hand Ra­jbal-Maraj is de­mand­ing an im­me­di­ate meet­ing with the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. Ra­jbal said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty was ap­palled over the slay­ing of Han­iff Mo­hammed who was chased and mur­dered on Fri­day by a gun­man in­side a mosque at Junon Street, Cal­i­for­nia.

Mo­hammed, 56, of Cal­i­for­nia, a con­trac­tor and car rental deal­er had just at­tend­ed the Fri­day mid­day Ju­mu’ah prayers when he was shot and killed around 1.30 pm.

Ra­jbal said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty was dis­gust­ed that the Gov­ern­ment has been los­ing the bat­tle with crim­i­nals who are tak­ing over the land­scape. He said the sit­u­a­tion was fur­ther wors­ened by the in­flux of crim­i­nal el­e­ments from Venezuela. Ra­jbal, who is al­so the lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the area at the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, said he was be­ing bom­bard­ed with com­plaints from mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty who are wor­ried that Venezue­lans may be en­ter­ing through the near­by Car­li Bay and may have start­ed set­ting up their own gangs. Ra­jbal said he wants a strong po­lice/army pres­ence through­out the Cou­va/Point Lisas area.

A mem­ber of the Cal­i­for­nia busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty who wished to re­main anony­mous said she had to close shop ear­ly af­ter Fri­day's killing. She said over the Car­ni­val week­end two peo­ple where gunned down a stone's throw away from her es­tab­lish­ment. "We are all scared, my work­ers are trau­ma­tised and they are now re­fus­ing to work on a week­end, they are scared of be­com­ing col­lat­er­al dam­age. I be­lieve the Cham­ber of Com­merce and the elect­ed of­fi­cials are not do­ing suf­fi­cient for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. Dur­ing this time of cri­sis we want joint po­lice/army pa­trols in Cal­i­for­nia. All the old talk and blab­ber is do­ing noth­ing for busi­ness. We de­mand more pa­trols now."

Cou­va South MP Rudy In­dars­in­gh said he wants Gov­ern­ment to come clean on their plans for bor­der pa­trols. In­dars­ingh said the en­tire coastal area from Clax­ton Bay to Fe­lic­i­ty should be heav­i­ly mon­i­tored to keep out il­le­gal im­mi­grants. He said law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties and the im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties should be giv­en the re­sources so they can start crack­ing down on il­le­gal im­mi­grants and weed out and deal with gang­sters and oth­er crim­i­nal el­e­ments.