Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The T&T Coast Guard does not cur­rent­ly have and nev­er had enough ves­sels to pro­vide 24-hour pa­trol ser­vice along all ar­eas of T&T’s en­tire coast­line.

This was re­vealed in a writ­ten re­ply from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds to a ques­tion from UNC MP Rod­ney Charles, which was cir­cu­lat­ed in Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day.

Charles’ query cit­ed “nu­mer­ous so­cial me­dia videos” cir­cu­lat­ing, in­volv­ing Coast Guard pa­trol ves­sels tied up on var­i­ous oc­ca­sions at Staubles Bay. Charles asked what steps are be­ing tak­en to guar­an­tee a 24/7 coast­line cov­er­age.

Hinds’ re­ply stat­ed, “This is a mat­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and there­fore any in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed will be cir­cum­scribed by se­cu­ri­ty con­sid­er­a­tions.”

“Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion from the Chief of De­fence Staff, the T&T Coast Guard (TTCG) does not cur­rent­ly have, and in fact, nev­er had, enough as­sets to pro­vide a 24-hour pa­trol ser­vice along all ar­eas of the en­tire coast­line of T&T.

“That would re­quire a huge fleet, and, in fact, no coun­try in the world has a coast guard with that ca­pa­bil­i­ty. In­stead, the TTCG us­es the as­sets in its ar­se­nal to pro­vide cov­er­age to ar­eas of op­er­a­tional in­ter­est.”

He added, “When a for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion had or­dered three Off­shore Pa­trol Ves­sels to bol­ster the TTCG’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties, the last UNC gov­ern­ment (now Op­po­si­tion) can­celled the con­tract capri­cious­ly. These Ama­zonas Class ves­sels, which were re­ject­ed by the UNC gov­ern­ment, were de­liv­ered to the Brazil­ian Navy in 2012 and 2013 and made an im­por­tant con­tri­bu­tion to that Navy’s abil­i­ty to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty, safe­ty and pro­tec­tion to Brazil’s ju­ris­dic­tion­al wa­ters.

“To rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion, which ef­fec­tive­ly stymied the op­er­a­tional pro­fi­cien­cies of the TTCG, this cur­rent Gov­ern­ment or­dered two Cape Class Pa­trol Ves­sels from Aus­tralia in 2018, which were re­ceived in 2021. These ves­sels, along with oth­er as­sets, have formed part of the coun­try’s bor­der se­cu­ri­ty ar­se­nal, and strength­ened the TTCG’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties to con­duct a wide range of op­er­a­tional ac­tiv­i­ties. The as­sets have been reg­u­lar­ly up­grad­ed and main­tained to en­sure op­ti­mal per­for­mance.”

Hinds stat­ed that notwith­stand­ing the im­pos­si­bil­i­ty of pro­vid­ing a full 24-hour pa­trol for the en­tire 322 nau­ti­cal miles of coast­line in Trinidad and 130 nau­ti­cal miles of coast­line in To­ba­go, and ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters, the TTCG’s Coastal Radar Sys­tem pro­vides 24-hour mon­i­tor­ing. It was up­grad­ed in 2020/2021, in­clud­ing sur­veil­lance equip­ment used by TTCG, to en­hance mon­i­tor­ing and for­ti­fi­ca­tion of bor­ders.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley replied to an­oth­er ques­tion from Charles on TTPS body cam­eras. Row­ley said re­sources have been made avail­able for more cam­eras.

The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er had spo­ken of this and 1,100 were ob­tained, an­oth­er sub­stan­tial pur­chase is be­ing made and if more are re­quired, it will be, it was not­ed.

Row­ley said one of the ben­e­fits of the re­cent re­gion­al crime sym­po­sium is ac­cel­er­at­ed re­gion­al co-op­er­a­tion - high­er shar­ing of in­for­ma­tion, equip­ment and per­son­nel - which can on­ly ben­e­fit cit­i­zens, es­pe­cial­ly where the ma­jor crime con­cerns of traf­fick­ing of guns, am­mu­ni­tion, drugs and peo­ple were in­volved.