Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar says she be­lieves the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment will "bring back" Fitzger­ald Hinds as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter if PNM wins the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

"They'll make him a sen­a­tor then reap­point him Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said at a UNC meet­ing in La Hor­quet­ta last night.

Not­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's state­ments last week on Hinds - who'd with­drawn his Laven­tille West can­di­da­cy - Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed, "The PNM has hatched a plan to fool T&T in­to be­liev­ing Hinds would be gone as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion be­cause he hasn't been giv­en his seat again.

"Why hasn't the Prime Min­is­ter re­moved Hinds as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter? If he doesn't be­lieve Hinds is good enough for a seat, why is he still there as min­is­ter? Every month, there's an av­er­age of 53 mur­ders... They can save hun­dreds of lives be­tween now and the next gen­er­al elec­tion by re­mov­ing Hinds and putting some­one com­pe­tent in charge."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said as of De­cem­ber 1, T&T had record­ed 562 mur­ders for 2024.

“Fig­ures from TTPS' Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA) branch showed T&T av­er­ages 53 mur­ders for every month in 2024. So, if De­cem­ber fol­lows suit, we're look­ing at a year-end to­tal some­where be­tween 595 and 630," she said.

She claimed be­tween 2015 and now, the homi­cide rate av­er­aged 488 per­sons a year.

"A to­tal of 4,957 per­sons dead to date, about 80 per cent were young, black men mur­dered in PNM con­stituen­cies ... the PNM doesn't care about cit­i­zens who live in their own con­stituen­cies..."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she didn't know if PNM St Joseph MP, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, would have been screened suc­cess­ful­ly last night (Mond) at Bal­isi­er House, but the UNC's next meet­ing would be on health in St Joseph.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, de­tail­ing a host of fig­ures on the To­ba­go Air­port ter­mi­nal project, as well as the Mott Mac­Don­ald re­port, Gleeds Sched­ule and oth­er in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing on Chi­na Rail­way per­tain­ing to the project, claimed Gov­ern­ment will be un­able to open it next year. She claimed project cost had risen from "$1.2B to $1.7B."

"How does that build­ing cost that amount of mon­ey? It's less than half the size of Trinci­ty Mall," she added, query­ing state­ments by NID­CO's chair­man that the project is on bud­get and faced no ma­jor set­back. She said the chair­man and Prime Min­is­ter have ques­tions to an­swer.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so called out to UNC front­lin­er Jack Warn­er (who was present) on facts at var­i­ous in­ter­vals.

Al­so speak­ing were UNC's first three se­lect­ed can­di­dates, Dr Michael Dowlat San Fer­nan­do East), Sad­dam Ho­sein (Barataria-San Juan) and Van­dana Mo­hit (Ch­agua­nas East).

Ho­sein told La Hor­quet­ta-Tal­paro to keep it out of "Fos­ter care."

He added, ”If you put Dr Dowlat on one side and Dr (Nyan Gads­by) Dol­ly on the oth­er, who would you choose? 'Dol­ly house' busi­ness done!!”

Dowlat cit­ed the need in San Fer­nan­do West for at­ten­tion to park­ing, health, crime, va­grancy, dis­placed an­i­mals, the San Fer­nan­do Mar­ket and traf­fic arrange­ment, in­clud­ing ad­just­ing the start and dis­missal time of schools in the area.

Dowlat re­it­er­at­ed UNC’s ed­u­ca­tion plans – tech­nol­o­gy and school in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment, teacher train­ing, in­clud­ing Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, re­vamp­ing Com­mu­ni­ty Po­lice and hav­ing doc­tors in schools.

Mo­hit said Ch­agua­nas East “still has work to do.”

Jear­lean John, thank­ing PNM Laven­tille West women for "get­ting rid" of Hinds, said she was sure they were "plan­ning some­thing for Row­ley too... (but) there's on­ly one man who's more hat­ed than Row­ley - is Stu­art Young."