Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) gov­ern­ment will pass leg­is­la­tion to al­low $1 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for the fam­i­ly of a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer who’s killed in the line of du­ty, says UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the pledge at the UNC’s San­gre Grande meet­ing at North­east­ern Col­lege on Sat­ur­day.

She said when it comes to safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, the most un­der­ap­pre­ci­at­ed peo­ple are pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty guards.

“The cur­rent ex­plo­sion of bloody, vi­o­lent crimes has made the jobs of pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers equal­ly more crit­i­cal and dan­ger­ous. We’ll en­sure when UNC wins, pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty guards win!” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

“The treat­ment of pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty guards as sec­ond-class cit­i­zens must end. The of­fi­cers de­serve greater re­spect and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for faith­ful­ly con­duct­ing their du­ties of pro­tect­ing peo­ple and prop­er­ty,” she added, cit­ing sto­ries of of­fi­cers hav­ing to share un­suit­ably sized bul­let­proof vests, work­ing in un­safe ve­hi­cles for pick­up and de­liv­ery of goods, ser­vices and mon­ey, and some­times be­ing forced to work dou­ble and triple shifts for min­i­mum wages.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she’d called on the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment to col­lab­o­rate with the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) and se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies to im­prove pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers’ work­ing en­vi­ron­ment and sup­port­ed the EPA’s pro­pos­al to re­move tax­es on life­sav­ing equip­ment (like bul­let­proof vests and for im­por­ta­tion of pri­vate bul­let­proof se­cu­ri­ty ve­hi­cles) to make them more rea­son­ably priced for se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies.

She added, “For pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers, there must be ad­e­quate pro­vi­sion of train­ing, safe­ty mea­sures, rel­e­vant equip­ment, and oth­er nec­es­sary re­sources, and fair com­pen­sa­tion with es­sen­tial ben­e­fits. This is the cry of all work­ers and we sat with the unions to craft a work­ers’ agen­da.

“I’m mak­ing a plea for pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers—there must be ad­e­quate pro­vi­sion of train­ing, safe­ty mea­sures, in­clud­ing pro­vi­sions for com­pen­sa­tion with es­sen­tial ben­e­fits and re­view of wages. Pro­vi­sion for manda­to­ry over­time pay­ments should be a pri­or­i­ty mat­ter. Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers who risk their lives on the job should be paid more than the min­i­mum wage, have med­ical cov­er­age, va­ca­tion time, and over­time pay for work­ing ex­tra shifts.”

She added, “We’ll es­tab­lish a joint fund, with gov­ern­ment and reg­is­tered se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies, to sup­port and com­pen­sate the fam­i­lies of pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers who lose their lives while on du­ty—the same as for TTPS of­fi­cers.

“On my watch, we promised and de­liv­ered a mil­lion dol­lars for TTPS and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel if an of­fi­cer dies in the line of du­ty. When we went out of of­fice, the PNM Gov­ern­ment nev­er car­ried through with the leg­is­la­tion for (pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers), the UNC com­mits to pro­vide the law. It shouldn’t be a hand­out, but a right. Any of­fi­cer falling in the line of du­ty, his fam­i­ly should have one mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion. Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers un­der­take cru­cial and of­ten life-threat­en­ing work, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing this un­re­lent­ing crime cri­sis. They must be prop­er­ly pro­tect­ed and com­pen­sat­ed.”

Queries over EBC

vot­er count

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so queried how the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion’s (EBC) vot­ers tal­ly had got­ten 20,000 more vot­ers than the last elec­tion.

“It’s been said that T&T has more than one mil­lion vot­ers. I ask the EBC: we have a de­clin­ing pop­u­la­tion—where did you get 20,000 more votes from? That’s some­thing we’ll pick up with the EBC,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her analy­sis of da­ta in­di­cates the PNM had 490 Bud­get promis­es over the past nine years. “The to­tal num­ber of bro­ken Bud­get promis­es is 373, and the to­tal num­ber of re­peat­ed Bud­get promis­es is 100. The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry reg­is­ters the high­est num­ber of bro­ken promis­es (51) ... So when I hear Young say­ing he’s com­ing to be a leader for all, I say to him, ‘You’re a liar’!” she said.

“For over a decade, you sat as the right-hand man of the rag­ing bull, and over­saw the op­pres­sion of our coun­try’s poor, work­ing and mid­dle class­es. Now, you come to talk about equal­i­ty for the small man and woman? Stu­art, you, with a track record of bul­ly­ing, elit­ism, nepo­tism, de­struc­tion, and con­tempt for the small man, no­body be­lieves a word that you say!”

She added, “Judge­ment day is com­ing! You all had peo­ple suf­fer­ing, eat­ing salt, but­ter, and rice while you all ate steak and cake in the Hy­att. I’m not com­ing with vengeance or mal­ice. I’m com­ing to elec­tion day with the most pow­er­ful weapon—love.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said one day af­ter she asked if any­one ever heard any PNM MP tell any­one that they love them, “...I saw the PNM set up a scene for Stu­art to shout ‘I love you’ to a PNM sup­port­er. It was the most force-ripe, fake ‘I love you’ I ever heard in my life. At least I know he’s lis­ten­ing to my speech­es.”

She al­so ac­cused “pop-up” par­ties of a grow­ing trend of po­lit­i­cal ma­nip­u­la­tion in­volv­ing cov­er-ups, de­flec­tions, back­room deal­ings, and sto­ry­telling.

“You don’t need to call any names, but you’re ful­ly aware of which pop-up par­ties are in bed with the PNM. You see them de­flect­ing for the Gov­ern­ment with fake nar­ra­tives, edit­ed videos, AI-gen­er­at­ed clips, fab­ri­cat­ed posts, and man­u­fac­tured con­cerns,” she said.

She called for a low­er­ing of elec­tion “vol­ume” over the ob­ser­vances of Shouter Bap­tist and Eid-ul-Fitr cel­e­bra­tions out of re­spect of the re­li­gions.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she would not have called elec­tions over the pe­ri­od of Ra­madan, Lent, Navra­tri and Spir­i­tu­al/Shouter Bap­tist ob­ser­vances.

“But Stu­ar­tie called it,” she said.