Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is has been en­gaged in high-lev­el talks with both the army and po­lice to de­vel­op a plan to as­sist in im­prov­ing se­cu­ri­ty and erad­i­cat­ing crim­i­nal el­e­ments in all the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) com­mu­ni­ties.

It is one of two ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures of­fi­cials are aim­ing to im­ple­ment at HDC de­vel­op­ments.

Those dis­cus­sions re­port­ed­ly took place days be­fore Sat­ur­day’s dead­ly stab­bings at Orop­une Gar­dens, Pi­ar­co and fol­lowed the mass shoot­ing at Harpe Place, Port-of-Spain, on March 16 in which five peo­ple were killed.

HDC’s Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Jay­selle Mc Far­lane told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day the dis­cus­sions led by Min­is­ter Robin­son-Reg­is took place last week.

Mc Far­lane spoke with GML af­ter the HDC is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the killings of a fa­ther and son at the cor­po­ra­tion’s apart­ment com­plex at Orop­une Gar­dens, Pi­ar­co on Sat­ur­day.

In the state­ment, the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment ex­pressed con­do­lences to the rel­a­tives of Im­ti­az and Im­raz Mo­hammed.

Min­is­ter Robin­son-Reg­is de­scribed the in­ci­dent as un­for­tu­nate and pre­ventable.

She said, “HDC strives to pro­vide safe com­mu­ni­ties for all cit­i­zens who are en­cour­aged to live in peace and com­fort.”

The Min­is­ter al­so made a call for “all res­i­dents in the var­i­ous HDC com­mu­ni­ties to find am­i­ca­ble so­lu­tions to prob­lems in­stead of re­sort­ing to vi­o­lence.”

But HDC’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor said steps had al­ready been set in mo­tion to ad­dress is­sues of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty at hous­ing de­vel­op­ments.

Mc Far­lane said they were adopt­ing a two-pronged ap­proach. She said a se­cu­ri­ty plan is be­ing worked on at the min­is­te­r­i­al lev­el and dis­cus­sions are tak­ing place with the heads of var­i­ous arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

She added the oth­er se­cu­ri­ty plan is be­ing de­vised by the HDC.

“We had our Head of Se­cu­ri­ty, Mr Box­hill present to the Board at the meet­ing last Wednes­day, on our plan to erad­i­cate or re­duce gang and all these oth­er is­sues, at all of our HDC de­vel­op­ments.”

She added while no one could pre­dict when some­one would en­gage in crim­i­nal or vi­o­lent be­hav­iour, the HDC has recog­nised the need to re­duce or pre­vent the in­ci­dents.

“There is a plan afoot to see how best we can mit­i­gate the cir­cum­stances, or the re-oc­cur­rence of any neg­a­tive se­cu­ri­ty and or gang is­sues so we are look­ing at putting some­thing in place pret­ty soon,” she ex­plained.

She said the HDC is cur­rent­ly work­ing on short, mid and long-term pre­ven­ta­tive se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures which will soon be rolled out. Mc Far­lane said she could not pro­vide de­tails of the se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures just yet.

Ef­forts to con­tact Min­is­ter Robin­son-Reg­is about the oth­er se­cu­ri­ty plan for HDC com­mu­ni­ties were un­suc­cess­ful.

Mean­while, the two sur­vivors from Sat­ur­day’s bru­tal stab­bing ram­page at Orop­une Gar­dens, Pi­ar­co, were dis­charged from hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day and re­turned to the apart­ment com­plex amidst fresh fears and tears.

Rel­a­tives ad­mit­ted to Guardian Me­dia, “It hadn’t been easy,” for the two to look at the spots where the two men had fall­en af­ter be­ing stabbed mul­ti­ple times in their heads and up­per bod­ies by a neigh­bour.

Al­though Nazeera Mo­hammed, 17; and Nicholas Di­matos, 19; were told the sus­pect re­mained in po­lice cus­tody—rel­a­tives said the as­sur­ance had done very lit­tle to al­lay the fears of the two.

Mo­hammed’s fa­ther Im­ti­az Mo­hammed, 46; and her broth­er Im­raz Mo­hammed, 23, were both killed by the sus­pect in a mur­der­ous rage on March 30, at Build­ing 16, Fourth Av­enue, Orop­une Gar­dens, Pi­ar­co.

Nazeera along with Di­matos were both in­jured dur­ing the in­ci­dent and had been treat­ed at hos­pi­tal.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, a fe­male rel­a­tive said Nazeera was co­her­ent and re­called the in­ci­dent, but re­vealed, “She was in a fit.”