Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is hope­ful that crime will stay un­der con­trol once the state of emer­gency (SoE) is lift­ed.

Cur­tis Williams, chair­man of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, is wor­ried that progress in restor­ing se­cu­ri­ty and re­duc­ing crime might not hold. How­ev­er, he is op­ti­mistic that strong co­or­di­na­tion among the po­lice, army, and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty forces will be key in main­tain­ing the low crime lev­els.

Re­cent fig­ures show that To­ba­go’s crime rate dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly, with mur­ders down by 66.67 per cent.

Last year, the is­land record­ed six mur­ders by March and end­ed the year with 26—the high­est In its his­to­ry. So far this year, there have been two mur­ders, both of which have been solved

Williams praised the po­lice and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty forces for their team­work, say­ing it is the first time he has wit­nessed such a uni­fied ef­fort on the is­land.

“Tourism is our main thing and we want the is­land and the vis­i­tors to be safe and I’m hap­py and I say thanks to the TTPS and law en­force­ment.

“I know the SoE is go­ing to come to an end … we hope that at the end of the SoE we don’t see crimes spik­ing again and we can keep crime, es­pe­cial­ly in To­ba­go, down to a bare min­i­mum,” he said.

Be­yond crime con­trol, Williams, an out­spo­ken ad­vo­cate for a stronger re­la­tion­ship be­tween the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and the cen­tral gov­ern­ment, be­lieves the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal di­vide Is hurt­ing To­ba­go’s res­i­dents and hin­der­ing progress.

“Let’s put aside all the elec­tion and let’s meet again mean­ing­ful­ly and have that con­ver­sa­tion. I’d like to see the THA hav­ing con­ver­sa­tion with the cen­tral gov­ern­ment and the cen­tral gov­ern­ment hav­ing con­ver­sa­tion with the THA that would tell us that some­thing pos­i­tive is hap­pen­ing on the is­land,” he said.