Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Crime con­sul­ta­tions with the pub­lic, es­pe­cial­ly on Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion, are set to be­gin next week and ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by the end of the month.

In one area, the stand-your-ground dis­cus­sions will be­gin from Ju­ly 22.

Word on the con­sul­ta­tions came on Tues­day at two Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) con­sul­ta­tions on the up­com­ing 2026 bud­get.

At the Oropouche West con­sul­ta­tions, where some at­ten­dees raised con­cerns about crime in the area, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe said a crime con­sul­ta­tion will be held on Ju­ly 28. He said this will fo­cus on the stand-your-ground law and oth­er an­ti-crime mea­sures.

The stand-your-ground law was promised by the UNC dur­ing the Gen­er­al Elec­tion cam­paign as one of its so­lu­tions to com­bat home in­va­sions. It will be among the first bills to be in­tro­duced in Par­lia­ment when sit­tings re­sume in Sep­tem­ber af­ter the cur­rent mid-year re­cess ends. A pol­i­cy pa­per has been done on the bill, of which as­pects Prime Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­tailed re­cent­ly. The crime con­sul­ta­tions on the bill are sched­uled to con­clude at the end of Ju­ly.

At Tues­day’s Oropouche West bud­get talks, Bo­doe re­ceived con­cerns from at­ten­dees about se­cu­ri­ty, in­clud­ing prae­di­al lar­ce­ny.

Farm­ers’ group rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ram­nar­ine Ramdeo called for at­ten­tion to prob­lems in the sec­tor. Oth­er au­di­ence mem­bers called for jobs in the area so that youths would not be lured in­to crime.

Bar­rack­pore busi­ness­man Vishal Ba­boolal rec­om­mend­ed that the po­lice ser­vice con­duct “sting” op­er­a­tions in vul­ner­a­ble ar­eas to catch car thieves and se­cure mar­itime bor­ders with radar and coastal ves­sels. He sug­gest­ed the re­turn of the Com­mu­ni­ty Com­fort Pa­trols on a 24-hour ba­sis and plac­ing body cam­eras on prison and Coast Guard of­fi­cers.

Al­so on Tues­day, at the Barataria/San Juan bud­get con­sul­ta­tions Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein said pub­lic dis­cus­sions on the stand-your-ground pro­pos­al in that con­stituen­cy will be held from Ju­ly 22.

Ho­sein ap­pealed to res­i­dents and in­ter­est­ed cit­i­zens to at­tend, as the Gov­ern­ment want­ed to hear from the pub­lic if changes were need­ed. At Tues­day’s con­sul­ta­tions, all at­ten­dees raised their hands when he asked how many were still fear­ful in their homes.

Speak­ing dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Red House, Port-of-Spain in May, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had not­ed some peo­ple ob­ject­ed to the Gov­ern­ment’s promise to make firearms more ac­ces­si­ble to cit­i­zens who qual­i­fy.

For those peo­ple, the PM said: “Do not ap­ply. If you’re against get­ting a firearm, you have the op­tion, it is your choice, do not ap­ply but we would pro­ceed with stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion. We will pro­ceed with giv­ing le­gal firearms, with­in a frame­work, be­cause those were mat­ters, we promised the elec­torate,” she ex­plained then.