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Friday, February 28, 2025

Hinds: Grave threat to T&T as 70,000 rounds of ammo unaccounted for

by

Gail Alexander
238 days ago
20240705
Independent Senator Paul Richards, speaks in the debate on the Bail (Amendment) Bill, 2024 in the Senate yesterday.

Independent Senator Paul Richards, speaks in the debate on the Bail (Amendment) Bill, 2024 in the Senate yesterday.

OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENT

The 70,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion that the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) had pur­chased and is now un­ac­count­ed for pos­es a very se­ri­ous and grave threat to cit­i­zens, vis­i­tors and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, says Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds.

The min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed this in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day re­ply­ing to In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Paul Richards who raised ques­tions fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s state­ment on the find­ings so far from the au­dit of the SSA. Row­ley ad­dressed Par­lia­ment on the mat­ter on Wednes­day.

Among find­ings, Dr Row­ley de­tailed the in­tel­li­gence agency’s in­creased pur­chase of am­mu­ni­tion from 8,000 rounds in 2017 to 100,000 rounds by 2022. Al­so, its in­creased stock of firearms from 24 pis­tols/re­volvers in 2016 to 103, of dif­fer­ent types and cal­i­bre, in­clud­ing mil­i­tary grade by 2022.

The au­dit dis­cov­ered that SSA’s for­mer di­rec­tor of ini­ti­at­ed pro­cure­ment of high-grade mil­i­tary bolt-ac­tion sniper ri­fles, com­plete with the most mod­ern si­lencers and oth­er ac­ces­sories .

This is the sub­ject of con­tin­u­ing au­dit and po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Yes­ter­day in the Sen­ate, Richards asked what strate­gies have been im­ple­ment­ed to mit­i­gate the po­ten­tial car­nage that can re­sult from 70,000 rounds of miss­ing am­mu­ni­tion end­ing up in the hands of crim­i­nals.

Hinds said, “Every sin­gle round of am­mu­ni­tion that finds it­self in un­law­ful hands with the prospects for mis­use, abuse, pos­es a very se­ri­ous threat. So ob­vi­ous­ly giv­en the Prime Min­is­ter’s ob­ser­va­tion that 70,000 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion are yet un­record­ed and un­ac­count­ed for, this ob­vi­ous­ly pos­es a grave and very se­ri­ous threat to cit­i­zens and vis­i­tors and of course to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

“That’s the rea­son why ac­count­abil­i­ty in the busi­ness of firearms and am­mu­ni­tion–their move­ment and use–is so crit­i­cal. So as the Prime Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed, the po­lice is pur­su­ing this par­tic­u­lar mat­ter metic­u­lous­ly and hope­ful­ly to a very suc­cess­ful find­ing or end.”

UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark asked whether the Gov­ern­ment has sought the as­sis­tance of for­eign coun­ter­parts to aid re­trieval of the am­mu­ni­tion.

Hinds said, they haven’t done so as yet. “Pure­ly, be­cause at this junc­ture it has not been deemed to be nec­es­sary since the sources of this fail­ure in the Con­trolled Equip­ment and Sup­plies In­ven­to­ry man­age­ment at the SSA does not ex­ceed the in­ves­tiga­tive and cor­rec­tive ex­per­tise and ca­pac­i­ty in T&T, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it re­sides in the TTPS.”


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