Gail Alexan­der

Barataria is now crime-rid­den and has be­come like Beetham and Mal­ick and the Barataria po­lice sta­tion must be re­opened.

Im­ti­az Seep­er­sad (Barataria sta­tion coun­cil) in­di­cat­ed this at Thurs­day’s UNC Barataria meet­ing.

He said Barataria had be­come like the two oth­er ar­eas as peo­ple are afraid to come out of their homes to vis­it fam­i­ly or go to the gro­cery be­cause of crime, "Barataria needs to have the Barataria po­lice to be re­opened."

Sharon Durham-Ma­haraj called on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds to re­open the sta­tion UNC MP Sad­dam Ho­sein ques­tioned what was Hinds' re­sponse to the crime sit­u­a­tion.

He said if Hinds didn’t know what his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is, “You should go away now.”

Safraz Ali added, “The ban­dits get­ting more brave and brazen caus­ing cit­i­zens to be in un­safe un­com­fort­able mode, the area has seen an in­crease in rob­beries, mur­ders and car­jack­ings.”

He said ban­dits don’t have mon­ey and have been "mi­grat­ing" to San Juan/Barataria and St Joseph, Aranguez tar­get­ting un­sus­pect­ing peo­ple.

“Dey don't care, dey com­ing and tak­ing what we have as dey big and bad and dey go­ing dey way. We lucky they don't bust shots on us."

Ali said up to Mon­day a fam­i­ly in the area ex­pe­ri­enced a 4 am home in­va­sion where a ban­dit team with a dri­ver and oth­ers with guns de­scend­ed on them. One got in the garage and start­ed bang­ing to get in the house. He said home­own­ers called po­lice but it took an hour for po­lice to ar­rive and the "greedy ban­dit to show how brazen he was, re­mained in the house mak­ing noise for the hour so po­lice were able to get them."

"Min­is­ter Hinds and Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, I don't know what you guys are do­ing," Ali said adding no plan was ev­i­dent.

"Ban­dits are just to­tal­ly tak­ing over, out­gun­ning, out­man­ning our po­lice and be­com­ing more brave and brazen."

Ali said peo­ple had to re­sort to pas­sive means like neigh­bour­hood watch­es or What's App groups as they didn't have ac­cess to li­cenced firearms as the Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er stopped that.

"But even­tu­al­ly we will get rid of these cock­roach­es pos­ing as ban­dits or vice ver­sa."

MP Ho­sein said Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was on­ly “drink­ing wa­ter and mind­ing his busi­ness” and had “blanked the Guyana en­er­gy ex­po to at­tend the Qatar en­er­gy meet­ing".

Coun­cil­lor Rac­quel Ghany said the $25 mil­lion for Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties could have been bet­ter used to im­prove the ed­u­ca­tion and so­cial ser­vices sys­tem. For­mer cruise ship work­er Kevin Steeple ap­pealed for a help­ing hand for cre­ative peo­ple to op­er­ate since many were de­pressed.

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