Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs Fitzger­ald Hinds says the first time he saw a fe­male se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer in this coun­try with a gun he was "star­tled and wor­ried".

Hinds, who had pre­vi­ous­ly been a po­lice of­fi­cer be­fore be­com­ing an at­tor­ney and politi­cian, made the state­ment as he pi­lot­ed the Pri­vate Se­cu­ri­ty In­dus­try Bill 2019 in the Par­lia­ment on Fri­day.

"I re­call first of all when I re­turned to Trinidad in 1994, be­cause when I left here in 1987, I did not see too many fe­males around the place do­ing se­cu­ri­ty work but when I re­turned to Trinidad in 1994 I went to a drug store in Pe­tit Bourg and I saw a la­dy in there with a firearm and it struck me, it wor­ried me too at that time," Hinds said.

"To­day I don't feel that wor­ry be­cause you see them all over tak­ing their place and they do a great job even in the State's se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus, they have done very well in the po­lice, the coast guard, the army they are pi­lots they do every­thing in armies and po­lice or­gan­i­sa­tions and prison ser­vices all over the world they are do­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly well but at that time it star­tled me," he said.

Hinds said the Pri­vate Se­cu­ri­ty In­dus­try Bill 2019 is in­tend­ed to pro­tect women work­ing in the se­cu­ri­ty in­dus­try.

"It would be a great ben­e­fit to all of us as a so­ci­ety if they (women) were re­spect­ed in the in­dus­try treat­ed fair­ly and mo­ti­vat­ed so that they would not be af­flict­ed or take away from their wom­an­hood and their moth­er­hood," Hinds said.

Hinds said he was told that CXC in­tends to de­sign an ex­am­i­na­tion along the lines of pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty, which he said is "re­fresh­ing".

Op­po­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said a top se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cial de­scribed the Bill to him as "harsh and op­pres­sive".

Mooni­lal said there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000 se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers in T&T.

He said a sec­tion of the Bill re­quires ran­dom drug test­ing for all se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers an­nu­al­ly.

Mooni­lal said the Bill was "con­tem­plat­ed by some­one who was not right in the head" as that is not prac­ti­cal and said it would be more fea­si­ble to en­sure that at least ten per cent of each se­cu­ri­ty firm's work­force is test­ed.

Mooni­lal said there are pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms pur­chas­ing high-tech mil­i­tary equip­ment on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket and this should be of con­cern to the State.