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.”