Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment, An­cel Ro­get, says the Gov­ern­ment has been de­feat­ed in its war against crime and has left cit­i­zens at the mer­cy of crim­i­nals.

Ro­get’s com­ments came on the heels of the re­cent killing of four young­sters, in­clud­ing a ten-year-old girl, in the Heights of Gua­napo.

Five oth­ers were al­so wound­ed in the at­tack which sent shock­waves through­out the coun­try.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Ro­get ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of re­peat­ed­ly fail­ing in its at­tempt to im­prove the safe­ty of cit­i­zens.

“We al­so ex­press our deep dis­dain, hor­ror and anger for the free pass that this Gov­ern­ment is giv­en while the Gov­ern­ment ab­di­cates its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the cit­i­zens of this coun­try. This Gov­ern­ment has failed over and over and over in its pri­ma­ry du­ty for which they were hired,” the union leader said.

Ro­get said the seem­ing­ly un­abat­ed crime lev­el was in­dica­tive of a gov­ern­ment with­out any plan or pol­i­cy to pro­tect cit­i­zens from crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

“They con­tin­ue to cast the blame on every­body else ex­cept them­selves, they are re­spon­si­ble through all the le­gal ports of en­try to pre­vent these guns from com­ing in­to our coun­try and they will give you no end of ex­cuse. And when you ac­cept all of those ex­cus­es, what in fact you do, you are sit­ting ducks for the home in­va­sions all of which are car­ried out with mod­ern high pow­ered weapons,” he added.

Dur­ing Cari­com’s Re­gion­al Sym­po­sium ad­dress­ing Crime and Vi­o­lence as a Pub­lic Health Is­sue in April, lead­ers ex­pressed con­cern over the crime rate which was be­ing fu­elled by il­le­gal guns and or­gan­ised crim­i­nal gangs.

Among the steps iden­ti­fied by the re­gion­al heads to mit­i­gate crime and vi­o­lence were the ban­ning of as­sault weapons as well as stand­ing with Mex­i­co on its le­gal ac­tion against US gun man­u­fac­tur­ers and re­tail­ers. Ro­get stat­ed that fol­low­ing pro­posed plans and poli­cies by the Gov­ern­ment to ar­rest the crime sit­u­a­tion, it is yet to take the nec­es­sary steps to pro­tect the coun­try’s bor­ders and stem the il­lic­it gun, am­mo and nar­co trade,

“They will blame every­body in­clud­ing Amer­i­ca for not pro­tect­ing their le­gal ports of en­try which all of these guns come in­to our coun­try...You can be a vic­tim of home in­va­sion, be­ing in he wrong place in the wrong time, a vic­tim through some as­sas­si­na­tion plot,” he said. Mean­while, Ro­get said he was not hing­ing his hopes on the Gov­ern­ment to roll out mea­sures to im­prove the lives of cit­i­zens, through poli­cies and fis­cal sys­tems, in the Oc­to­ber 2 bud­get.

“They must of ne­ces­si­ty in­crease the min­i­mum wage and again we call on the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to re­duce the price of gaso­line at the pumps and not put more hard­ships on peo­ple by im­ple­ment­ing prop­er­ty tax and no to the in­crease in the re­tire­ment age to ac­cess your pen­sion in this coun­try,” he added.

The JTUM pres­i­dent al­so said the coun­try was cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a chron­ic for­eign ex­change cri­sis as a re­sult of Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure and out­lined sev­er­al rea­sons, in­clud­ing poor poli­cies, for the lan­guish­ing is­sue.