At a time when the Gov­ern­ment is re­view­ing its costs to­ward so­cial pro­grammes such as the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (CDAP), Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the mil­lions of dol­lars ex­pend­ed on crime-fight­ing could bet­ter serve the coun­try else­where.

Dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, White­hall, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Row­ley said a few peo­ple en­gaged in crim­i­nal con­duct were dam­ag­ing the coun­try in more ways than one.

“We have to spend a lot of mon­ey on se­cu­ri­ty is­sues both in the pub­lic sec­tor and the pri­vate sec­tor. It’s a waste of na­tion­al re­sources. A few peo­ple en­gaged in crim­i­nal con­duct are caus­ing us to di­rect a lot of re­sources to them; to con­trol them and their be­hav­iour, and to pro­tect our­selves from them,” Row­ley said.

“You could imag­ine if they were be­hav­ing dif­fer­ent­ly and those mil­lions that we’re spend­ing on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty were be­ing spent on ed­u­ca­tion, health and in­fra­struc­ture and so on? We would’ve been a much bet­ter place. The more we have to spend (on se­cu­ri­ty), the less re­sources we have to spend on those (oth­er min­istries), so they’re (crim­i­nals) dam­ag­ing us in more ways than one.”

He added, “We’re spend­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars on se­cu­ri­ty items to keep peo­ple out your yard. And, of course, there are fam­i­lies who have mem­bers of their fam­i­lies who are mur­der­ers, killers who are known to them. They are sup­port­ing them, hid­ing them, hid­ing guns for them. At the end of the day, we are wast­ing not just time, (but) lives and re­sources. It is a job that we can­not walk away from.”

Nev­er­the­less, the Prime Min­is­ter said he be­lieves ad­e­quate re­sources are be­ing made avail­able for se­cu­ri­ty.

While he was en­thu­si­as­tic that “things will turn around in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture,” Row­ley said an ob­sta­cle Gov­ern­ment is fac­ing is crim­i­nals not be­ing held ac­count­able. He said the mind­set of crim­i­nals is that they will not be held ac­count­able for their ac­tions but even at the courts, they’re not held ac­count­able.

Giv­ing an ex­am­ple, the Prime Min­is­ter said he was puz­zled to find out that some­one was re­leased on bond af­ter be­ing charged with kid­nap­ping for ran­som.

He said, “Kid­nap­ping for ran­som, one of the most heinous crimes and I saw a per­son walk­ing out of the cour­t­house on a bond. And to make the bond palat­able, they were told that if you mis­be­have, you will have to pay $50,000. Now, please, don’t charge no crim­i­nal that kind of mon­ey be­cause for God’s sake, if they have to pay it, the on­ly way they could pay it, be­cause they love their free­dom, is to just to come out and dis­tress peo­ple to get the mon­ey to pay the court. I’m still try­ing to un­der­stand how does one get out of court for kid­nap­ping for ran­som on a bond, but T&T that has hap­pened.”

CDAP stays, no VAT in­crease

While ad­mit­ting the Gov­ern­ment was con­tin­u­ing to look at val­ue for mon­ey, the Prime Min­is­ter as­sured the pub­lic they will not aban­don CDAP as a pol­i­cy.

How­ev­er, he re­it­er­at­ed that the pro­gramme’s cost has to be re­viewed, as af­ford­abil­i­ty is now a mat­ter of con­cern.

CDAP costs the state around $400 an­nu­al­ly.

Row­ley said, “The Gov­ern­ment has not tak­en any de­ci­sion to cut CDAP or to shut down CDAP. We just men­tioned it as part of the area of Gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty where we will re­view it as we go for­ward. We are com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that peo­ple with chron­ic dis­eases get what the coun­try can af­ford.”

He added, “We want to find out first, is there any leak­age or cor­rup­tion or loss? Are we buy­ing the right drugs at the right price? We want to know that. That’s why we look at it. Are we pro­vid­ing the peo­ple who qual­i­fy for CDAP? These are the things we do, as we did with GATE (Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es pro­gramme).”

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so called for the coun­try to ig­nore claims made by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) will be in­creased.

He stressed the Gov­ern­ment has tak­en no de­ci­sion nor held any dis­cus­sion about in­creas­ing VAT.

More­over, he added that Gov­ern­ment has noth­ing to hide and would come clean with the pub­lic if it was plan­ning to in­crease VAT.

He al­so ap­peared un­both­ered about a leak or how the Op­po­si­tion Leader got hold of such doc­u­ments in the first place.

He said the doc­u­ments Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed as a “Cab­i­net note” were work­ing doc­u­ments of the Cab­i­net which start­ed with a Cab­i­net note and con­tain an ap­pen­dix. He ex­plained that the da­ta pro­vid­ed in the ap­pen­dix show­ing pos­si­ble rev­enue pro­jec­tions was not un­com­mon, as tech­nocrats from the Min­istry of Fi­nance usu­al­ly pro­vide such in­for­ma­tion to help guide the Gov­ern­ment’s dis­cus­sions.

Row­ley said, “For the sec­ond time, I want to make it very clear, notwith­stand­ing any­thing you’ve heard from the Op­po­si­tion, es­pe­cial­ly the Op­po­si­tion Leader, there was no dis­cus­sion in the Cab­i­net about ad­just­ment, ei­ther up­wards or down­wards, on VAT. That did not hap­pen. That is not true.

“A Cab­i­net note, we have noth­ing to hide. She gets ac­cess to it. There are very few things that are se­cure. So, to come and say that you get a leak, and you will buss a mark, we have noth­ing to hide. If we want­ed to in­crease the tax, we would have come and tell you so, as we do it. We re­duced it when we had to and we thought it was a good pol­i­cy and it re­mains that way. We in­creased the al­lo­ca­tion for peo­ple, as to make them ac­cess more tax-free in­come.”

He added, “We don’t have to hide our ac­tions and you don’t have to re­ly on some­body steal­ing a piece of pa­per from some­where and mis­rep­re­sent­ing it to you to know how the gov­ern­ment is go­ing about your pol­i­cy and your tax. We have not added a sin­gle tax here. We are talk­ing about col­lect­ing tax that is due and col­lect­ing it ef­fi­cient­ly.”

Row­ley called Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ments “dis­turb­ing” and said she was try­ing to pan­ic the pub­lic.