SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Sense­less mur­ders are be­com­ing too fre­quent in Cen­tral Trinidad, says the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC).

Cham­ber head Richie Sookhai told Guardian Me­dia the po­lice are fail­ing to act even though the Po­lice Ser­vice it­self called on the pub­lic to bring for­ward in­for­ma­tion to help stop crim­i­nals.

Sookhai re­vealed that Moo­nan Hard­eo, 65, who was killed in a home in­va­sion on Tues­day, had made a po­lice re­port about crim­i­nals lurk­ing along the south­ern end of Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road. How­ev­er, the po­lice failed to act.

“The Po­lice are chant­i­ng the mantra ‘see some­thing say some­thing’. Some­thing has been re­port­ed in this sce­nario—two or three days pri­or—and yet the crim­i­nals are able to in­fil­trate and take the life of some­one. This is ridicu­lous,” Sookhai told Guardian Me­dia.  

“We can't keep on liv­ing in fear. The CCIC and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty are do­ing their part, but we are not see­ing any progress in terms of the ser­vices that are de­liv­ered to the peo­ple of Ch­agua­nas, and T&T by ex­ten­sion,” he point­ed out.

The Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber pres­i­dent said crime should be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly by every­one. He ob­served that even though it is the fes­tive sea­son, many have no choice but to re­main in­doors to pre­vent them­selves from be­com­ing vic­tims of crime.

With re­gard to sales and busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty, Richie Sookhai said more needs to be done to beef up se­cu­ri­ty in the Cen­tral bor­ough, and to con­trol traf­fic.

He in­di­cat­ed sales have been slow, but busi­ness own­ers are hope­ful that dur­ing the last week be­fore Christ­mas, busi­ness would pick up.

Sookhai al­so called on the au­thor­i­ties to fix the ven­dor's mall on the site of the old health cen­tre. He said the mall is un­der-uti­lized and warned that it is filled with ver­min and ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties.

“It has be­come a cesspool, over­run with rats, and in­fil­trat­ed with all sorts of neg­a­tive ac­tiv­i­ties,” he said.