Gail Alexan­der

Cab­i­net is go­ing through the pro­cure­ment process to get more CCTV cam­eras – and there ought to be con­se­quences for sec­ondary school stu­dents demon­strat­ing vi­o­lent be­hav­iour, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port af­ter re­turn­ing from Bar­ba­dos, Row­ley said Cab­i­net has cleared moves to get more CCTV cam­eras, iden­ti­fied fund­ing for it and is go­ing through the pro­cure­ment process.

He added that Gov­ern­ment didn’t need UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal to call for CCTV cam­eras since there are cam­eras in use and while some need­ed on­go­ing main­te­nance and up­grade, Cab­i­net’s al­so al­ready ad­dress­ing this.

On the ris­ing mur­der rate, Row­ley not­ed T&T’s na­ture as a vi­o­lent so­ci­ety.

He said, “In re­cent years, peo­ple have got­ten their hands on firearms and heav­ier weapons – au­to­mat­ic as­sault weapons – and some of our peo­ple have been en­gaged in crime for prof­it and it’s some­thing that’s at­tract­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s at­ten­tion and we have el­e­ments of state en­gaged in do­ing what is doable in try­ing to iden­ti­fy the po­ten­tial for these crimes to take place and seek­ing to dis­arm peo­ple.

“But there are a lot of crimes done and are on­ly known to us when it’s done in the house­hold. I know there are calls for Gov­ern­ment to do more, but there are cer­tain lim­i­ta­tions to what the Gov­ern­ment can do with re­spect to house­hold crimes.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment is en­gaged on deal­ing with the gun crimes, while the TTPS and SSA were fo­cused on gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion. Row­ley ap­pealed to the pub­lic to sup­port the TTPS with in­for­ma­tion on cul­prits with firearms they might know.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so said he was very con­cerned about re­ports of sec­ondary school stu­dents fight­ing.

“While I un­der­stand that it’s an en­vi­ron­ment of be­ing locked up for two years (and) some chil­dren are re­leas­ing some neg­a­tive en­er­gy, but the vi­o­lence I’ve seen is un­ac­cept­able,” he said.

He said the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry is cur­rent­ly re­view­ing the process by which stu­dents who show vi­o­lent be­hav­iour are re­strained.

“You’ ll hear more in fu­ture. But there ought to be con­se­quences for vi­o­lent be­hav­iour, as well as pro­vid­ing sup­port for chil­dren to re­duce their op­por­tu­ni­ties to act out in vi­o­lent ways,” he said.

He said there are al­so is­sues to be dealt with re­gard­ing videos of stu­dents fight­ing.

“One of which is that con­se­quences flow from ac­tions and chil­dren need to be aware of that and we al­so need to re­cruit the par­ents of these chil­dren to join in as­sess­ing their be­hav­iour and en­cour­ag­ing im­prove­ments in their con­duct,” he al­so said.

He said all of these chil­dren would have par­ents whom he’d like to be­lieve won’t con­done the vi­o­lence.

“That’s one area which needs to be at­tend­ed to.”

Row­ley, how­ev­er, said there would be no re­turn to cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment and “beat our way out of this.”

On re­ports of pae­dophiles ap­ply­ing to en­ter the teach­ing ser­vice, he said he wasn’t aware the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s in­ter­view had a part ask­ing if peo­ple were pae­dophiles. He said there was no reg­is­ter for this in T&T to iden­ti­fy them yet ei­ther.

Ad­just­ments on cruise ships, un­vac­ci­nat­ed trav­ellers

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has con­firmed fur­ther ad­just­ments are ahead to re­stric­tions where en­try in­to T&T of un­vac­ci­nat­ed trav­ellers is con­cerned and al­so re­gard­ing the cruise ship busi­ness – but face masks in pub­lic will re­main.

He said the coun­try need­ed to fo­cus on the fact COVID-19 is still present and oth­er coun­tries are still bat­tling eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tions from the virus.

“We’ve been through a lot, it cost us a lot and we’d hate to end up in a sit­u­a­tion where we have eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tions. The med­ical ad­vice is we con­tin­ue to wear the mask as it re­duces if not elim­i­nates in­di­vid­ual ex­po­sure,” Row­ley said.

“We ex­pect to make fur­ther ad­just­ments, we’ll meet with the team some­time soon.

“There are very few things to ad­just any­way– the en­try in­to the coun­try of un­vac­ci­nat­ed trav­ellers and the cruise ship busi­ness. I’m in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Tourism Min­is­ter on that.”

He said a de­ci­sion was be­ing made on that and a note was to have come to Cab­i­net on that yes­ter­day.

He said he hoped the note did come to take some ac­tion on the cruise ship side and on the trav­el side in gen­er­al.

But T&T will still see masks re­quired in pub­lic spaces for a while.