DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Re­tired Brigadier Gen­er­al Carl Al­fon­so is ex­press­ing sup­port for an au­dit of arms and am­mu­ni­tion at the ar­moury of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment’s Cu­mu­to base.  

Al­fon­so was speak­ing af­ter re­ports that Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher had or­dered the au­dit due to the in­creased dis­cov­ery of spent shells bear­ing mark­ings of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) at crime scenes. 

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Al­fon­so said if noth­ing crim­i­nal had tak­en place, the De­fence Force should not be of­fend­ed by the probe. 

“In­ves­ti­ga­tions are not a bad thing. If you don’t have any co­coa in the sun, you don’t have to wor­ry. I can’t see any­body ob­ject­ing or feel­ing too bad­ly about any in­ves­ti­ga­tions or any au­dit,” he said.

“They must have heard some­thing, clear­ly. I hope that the De­fence Force lead­er­ship doesn’t have a prob­lem with it. Some­times you need to take stock and ask your­self ‘What am I do­ing here?’” 

Mean­while, for­mer head of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, Garvin Heer­ah, de­scribed the au­dit as an act of due dili­gence and ac­count­abil­i­ty. He re­called a sim­i­lar au­dit was con­duct­ed in­ter­nal­ly by the TTDF at Tetron Bar­racks ad­dress­ing sim­i­lar con­cerns.  

How­ev­er, he be­lieves this au­dit should go be­yond mere de­tec­tion to im­ple­ment ro­bust mea­sures that would for­ti­fy the coun­try’s de­fence struc­tures and en­sure mil­i­tary as­sets were se­cure, and the in­tegri­ty of the armed forces was main­tained. 

“While this step is in­deed in the right di­rec­tion to en­sure thor­ough checks and bal­ances, it is im­per­a­tive that such au­dits are not sole­ly fo­cused on de­tec­tion and prob­ing. They must al­so in­clude a struc­tured and com­pre­hen­sive gap analy­sis to iden­ti­fy and mit­i­gate sys­temic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. An au­dit alone is in­suf­fi­cient with­out a par­al­lel com­pre­hen­sive RT­VA (risk, threat, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty as­sess­ment),” Heer­ah said. 

“This com­bined ap­proach will en­sure that any weak­ness­es in the sys­tem are prompt­ly iden­ti­fied and ad­dressed, pro­mot­ing the re­struc­tur­ing and re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of process­es to en­hance se­cu­ri­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty with­in the TTDF,” he added.  

Al­though re­ports sug­gest that the au­dit is be­ing con­duct­ed by the Spe­cial Branch, at­tempts to get de­tails from the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit have been un­suc­cess­ful as calls and mes­sages to Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer, In­spec­tor Michelle Lewis, and Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions head Joanne Archie went unan­swered.