Renu­ka Singh

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) will rein­tro­duce the Min­istry of Jus­tice and in­crease the mil­i­tary re­tire­ment age from 47 as part of their crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tive.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced this yes­ter­day dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to a pri­vate mo­tion to "con­demn the Gov­ern­ment for its fail­ure to deal with ram­pant crime."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said she plans to bring back the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, and es­tab­lish a Min­istry of Home Af­fairs to help re­duce the ris­ing crime rate.

Af­ter list­ing the failed crime plans im­ple­ment­ed by the Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion she added: " I could con­tin­ue with this, with the re­but­tals and the re­but­tals, but this blame game will get us nowhere.

"Does the Gov­ern­ment have a plan to fight crime? But I'm lis­ten­ing to him (Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young) and it's the same old, same old. This Gov­ern­ment is not about pre­vent­ing crime, it is about lock­ing up peo­ple," she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Gov­ern­ment had in­sin­u­at­ed that the Op­po­si­tion was de­lib­er­ate­ly block­ing leg­is­la­tion to deal with crime.

"Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth," she said.

She said a pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion brought in 130 for­eign­ers, paid them more mon­ey than the lo­cals to run Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of T&T (SAUTT) and the body was il­le­gal which is why she dis­band­ed it when she took of­fice.

"You were pay­ing these for­eign­ers and the crime was not go­ing down. In fact, it was go­ing up," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She added: "You seem to think that any­one we talk to is a crim­i­nal, but I don't know about any fam­i­ly mem­ber who may be a crim­i­nal," she said, throw­ing talk for Young.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said de­spite what the Gov­ern­ment said, the Op­po­si­tion sup­port­ed eight crime-fight­ing bills. She said that the Op­po­si­tion re­fused to sup­port some bills, with­out amend­ments, be­cause they gave ac­cess to peo­ple be­ing set up.

"So we have to guard cit­i­zens to make sure their rights are not vi­o­lat­ed and that is why we can­not af­ford to sup­port your bills as they are," she said.

She al­so crit­i­cised Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and the Gov­ern­ment for claim­ing that the UNC was afraid to sup­port crime-fight­ing bills be­cause they would get caught up in it.

"The on­ly thing I'm afraid of is that you would get back in­to gov­ern­ment," she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who al­so de­nied that the Op­po­si­tion was afraid to pass the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Bill, added: "We brought it and we gave three of­fi­cers the pow­er to ap­ply for war­rants, etc. Now you come here and tell me that bill is be­fore the Sen­ate, it is not yet be­fore us and talks about in­ter­cep­tion from pris­on­ers in the bars and so on, but that is not what that bill is about."

She said t oth­er pro­vi­sions in that leg­is­la­tion would af­fect pri­vate cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers.

"They are not telling the whole truth. It is go­ing to dam­age every­body," she said.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader said a Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) 2017 re­port talked about "283,000 in­ter­cepts be­ing made".

"That is just mac­co­ing be­cause it can­not be used in court," she said.