Gai Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry is be­ing guid­ed by the T&T Prison Ser­vice lead­er­ship on the mat­ter of safe hous­es for prison of­fi­cers and con­sid­er­a­tions from its lead­er­ship are un­der­way, says Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds.

Hinds in­di­cat­ed this dur­ing a Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee ex­am­i­na­tion by the Op­po­si­tion on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry’s Bud­get fund­ing in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

Hinds was ques­tioned by Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Sad­dam Ho­sein, who not­ed that prison of­fi­cers’ lives have been un­der threat, in­clud­ing the re­cent shoot­ing of one of­fi­cer in Barataria in what was re­port­ed to be an as­sas­si­na­tion at­tempt on act­ing Prison Com­mis­sion­er Sher­win Bruce. He ques­tioned why there was no al­lo­ca­tion for 2023 or 2024.

Hinds, say­ing these mat­ters are par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive, added that he wouldn’t want to com­ment too “flu­ent­ly” on this.

“Suf­fice it to say, I’m large­ly guid­ed by the T&T Pris­ons Ser­vices lead­er­ship in this re­gard and the con­sid­er­a­tions from them are un­der­way,” Hinds said, adding he’ll al­so be guid­ed on the mat­ter by oth­er in­tel­li­gence and law en­force­ment per­son­nel.

Say­ing he agreed with Ho­sein’s view that more has to be done to pro­tect prison of­fi­cers in terms of prop­er hous­ing and se­cu­ri­ty, Hinds said, “They (of­fi­cers) have been iden­ti­fied by the crim­i­nals in T&T by virtue of the work they do as be­ing a par­tic­u­lar risk and we’re tak­ing all pos­si­ble ac­tion to re­solv­ing that prob­lem.

“It’s not on­ly the prison of­fi­cers who are at risk—every one of us is at risk, as there are peo­ple in this coun­try who feel they can do wrong and still be pre­dom­i­nant, be wrong and get right—kill to go in the jail and they’re pre­pared to kill to come out too!”

Hinds, de­tail­ing im­proved CCTV, wa­ter and toi­let-per-cell im­prove­ments at the Port-of-Spain prison, not­ed stain­less steel is now be­ing used since pris­on­ers broke up con­crete ta­bles and at­tacked of­fi­cers with con­crete pieces dur­ing one “up­heaval”.

He said mon­ey has al­so been al­lo­cat­ed for prison of­fi­cers’ back­pay and ef­forts are on to fill 519 va­cant posts to com­plete the es­tab­lish­ment of 4,271 of­fi­cers need­ed.

Seeks UNC sup­port for an­ti-crime laws

On UNC MP Rod­ney Charles’ queries about as­sur­ing the pub­lic about a halt to the en­try of il­le­gal guns in­to the coun­try, Hinds point­ed to the new river­ine/coastal as­sets and “... Ro­bust gun re­trieval work on the ground ... which is what you saw in the San­ta Cruz mat­ter—the po­lice are on high ca­pac­i­ty, full throt­tle look­ing for guns.”

Hinds added, “We’d al­so like to tell the pub­lic that we can be as­sured of Op­po­si­tion sup­port as we seek to im­ple­ment laws to pro­tect peo­ple. Can I give them that as­sur­ance?”

Charles replied, “Once you come with good leg­is­la­tion, well thought, we’ll sup­port it.”

Hinds said Cab­i­net had ap­proved the se­lec­tive ten­der­ing process for the e-pass­port pro­vi­sion, the min­istry is­sued in­vi­ta­tions and bids were re­ceived. Eval­u­a­tion is in progress and a rec­om­men­da­tion is ex­pect­ed in the next cou­ple weeks. A Fin­ger­print sys­tem for Im­mi­gra­tion is al­so be­ing con­sid­ered with Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Min­istry ex­per­tise.

A $5 mil­lion hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber is al­so be­ing ac­quired soon for the T&T Coast Guard for de­com­pres­sion in high-risk div­ing. Hinds said div­ing was nec­es­sary for nar­cotics re­trieval, as cul­prits some­times throw drugs over­board, and for re­trieval of guns and corpses.