Jesse Ramdeo

PM Dr Kei­th Row­ley will host a me­dia con­fer­ence next Tues­day specif­i­cal­ly ded­i­cat­ed to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. He was at the time re­spond­ing to ques­tions sur­round­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty on Wednes­day which fea­tured Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood Christo­pher. The Top Cop had ad­mit­ted that her crime plans for 2023 had failed.

When asked about crit­i­cisms that Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s ap­par­ent short­falls al­so re­flect poor­ly on him, he again promised to an­swer all at Tues­day’s con­fer­ence.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so stat­ed that mat­ters re­lat­ing to polic­ing strate­gies in­clud­ing ef­forts to im­prove ma­rine op­er­a­tions were among top­ics re­cent­ly dis­cussed with US of­fi­cials at a re­cent trip to Wash­ing­ton. The Prime Min­is­ter said there were some “trou­bling in­ter­nal is­sues” which were dis­cussed, where she said in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­ised crim­i­nals seemed to feel com­fort­able work­ing with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Rol­wey, dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing a gun crimes in­tel­li­gence unit were al­so an area of pri­or­i­ty.

Dr Row­ley led a del­e­ga­tion to Wash­ing­ton where dis­cus­sions on mat­ters re­lat­ing to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and en­er­gy af­fairs were con­duct­ed with var­i­ous lead­ers in­clud­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris and US Sec­re­tary Of State An­tho­ny Blinken.

When asked why Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds was not part of the of­fi­cial del­e­ga­tion he said Hinds had press­ing mat­ters to deal with at home.