Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Act now!

That’s the call from Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who wants the Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly im­ple­ment some prac­ti­cal an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives to stem the blood­shed and ter­ror in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

She said this should be done in the in­ter­im, ahead of the up­com­ing talks be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion on the crime sit­u­a­tion.

Both sides are to have the an­ti-crime talks af­ter this month’s de­bate and scruti­ny of the 2024 Bud­get. That must be de­bat­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, ex­am­ined by the House’s Fi­nance Com­mit­tee and de­bat­ed by the Sen­ate for pas­sage of the Bud­get by month’s end.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley wrote Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Sep­tem­ber 16 on the an­ti-crime talks. She re­spond­ed on Sep­tem­ber 26, sub­mit­ting 18 pro­pos­als and sug­gest­ing the talks be held af­ter Bud­get ac­tiv­i­ties. Row­ley, in a post on the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter’s Face­book page, agreed the talks would be af­ter those ac­tiv­i­ties and stat­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s team would be an­nounced in the “com­ing days.”

On Mon­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had not yet ob­tained an of­fi­cial re­ply from Row­ley.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “While the coun­try awaits an of­fi­cial re­sponse to my let­ter to Kei­th Row­ley, where I out­lined plans to se­cure the cit­i­zen­ry and al­so re­quest­ed the ad­di­tion of stake­hold­ers to pro­posed talks, I am hard-pressed to­day to speak on be­half of our be­sieged na­tion.

“Over the past cou­ple of days, there have been mul­ti­ple ghast­ly mur­ders, bru­tal home in­va­sions, shoot­ings, and au­da­cious threats from gangs to harm our coura­geous po­lice of­fi­cers.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that the de­com­pos­ing body of a woman was found dumped, a corpse was dis­cov­ered down a precipice, peo­ple were killed while con­duct­ing trans­ac­tions, an el­der­ly busi­ness fam­i­ly was sav­age­ly at­tacked, and a teenag­er went miss­ing.

“That is a mere snap­shot of the ram­pant and unchecked vi­o­lence and dis­or­der.

“The raw re­al­i­ty is that Trinidad and To­ba­go is in the ear­ly throes of an­ar­chy, with un­re­lent­ing hor­rif­ic crimes, a low de­tec­tion rate, no gov­ern­ment crime pre­ven­tion plans, and an over­bur­dened ju­di­cial sys­tem lead­ing to so­cial de­cay,” she stat­ed.

She added, “The Gov­ern­ment seems to er­ro­neous­ly be­lieve they have a li­cense to do noth­ing to rein in the run­away vi­o­lent crime cri­sis un­til the pro­posed an­ti-crime talks. I call on the Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly im­ple­ment some prac­ti­cal an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives in the in­ter­im to stem the blood­shed and ter­ror.

“I urge Row­ley to lis­ten to the call of cit­i­zens, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, and civ­il so­ci­ety to re­move Fitzger­ald Hinds as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter and in­sti­tute im­me­di­ate prac­ti­cal mea­sures to pro­tect the cit­i­zens from ruth­less crim­i­nals.”