JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

With rough­ly $6.4 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in the Bud­get, some stake­hold­ers have ex­pressed cau­tion about the im­pact on key de­part­ments un­der its purview.

Dur­ing his maid­en Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion yes­ter­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo an­nounced plans to ex­pand court­rooms in Ch­agua­nas, Rio Claro, San­gre Grande and Diego Mar­tin, while en­shrin­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to a time­ly tri­al. These ini­tia­tives will di­rect­ly af­fect the Jus­tice Min­istry, an arm of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

The min­is­ter al­so pledged to strength­en the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and Pub­lic De­fend­er’s Of­fices, promis­es made by pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion and the Law As­so­ci­a­tion for com­ment but no re­spons­es were re­ceived up to press time.

Tan­coo out­lined plans to in­cor­po­rate 280 aux­il­iary fire of­fi­cers, pur­chase 225 new breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus, and up­grade fire sta­tions in Savonet­ta, San­ta Cruz, and San­gre Grande, along with new ve­hi­cles and ther­mal-imag­ing equip­ment.

Re­spond­ing to the an­nounce­ment, Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Keonne Guy called for a de­tailed time­line of im­ple­men­ta­tion and clar­i­ty on the al­lo­ca­tions.

“We want to see the de­tails and ex­act­ly how much is al­lo­cat­ed,” Guy said.

“Based on the draft es­ti­mates, we can un­der­stand the di­rec­tion the min­is­ter and Cab­i­net are tak­ing to ad­dress the needs of the fire ser­vice and pub­lic safe­ty.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion vice pres­i­dent Lester Lo­gie wel­comed the an­nounce­ment of 500 new prison of­fi­cers and fa­cil­i­ty up­grades, but said clar­i­ty on over­time ar­rears and roll­out plans is es­sen­tial.

Mean­while, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith crit­i­cised plans to move the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC) un­der the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, de­scrib­ing the US $80 mil­lion fa­cil­i­ty as un­der­utilised.

“It is not a po­lice unit … it can as­sist with traf­fic, floods, ma­jor events, Car­ni­val, and uni­fy in­tel­li­gence across pro­tec­tive ser­vices,” Grif­fith said.

For­mer NOC head Dr Garvin Heer­ah agreed, not­ing the cen­tre’s orig­i­nal man­date as a na­tion­al co­or­di­nat­ing hub for cri­sis and op­er­a­tions, not sole­ly law en­force­ment.

Tan­coo said along­side the rein­te­gra­tion, mu­nic­i­pal po­lice and mo­bile units will be ex­pand­ed, and the E999 sys­tem up­grad­ed to sup­port in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions.

The min­is­ter al­so an­nounced plans to:

Re­form firearms laws for re­spon­si­ble own­er­ship.

Pro­mote re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion over in­car­cer­a­tion for non-vi­o­lent of­fend­ers.

Ex­pand CCTV cov­er­age.

Strength­en port se­cu­ri­ty.

Es­tab­lish a foren­sic sci­ence com­plex and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty train­ing cen­tre at UWI Debe.