An­na-Lisa Paul

Gang­ster­ism in T&T is on the in­crease and ac­cord­ing to San Juan/Barataria MP Sad­dam Ho­sein, it is as a di­rect re­sult of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s fail­ure to pro­vide the cit­i­zen­ry with a qual­i­ty stan­dard of life in­clud­ing se­cu­ri­ty and ad­e­quate so­cial pro­grammes to ben­e­fit the less for­tu­nate.

High­ly crit­i­cal of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) as he claimed T&T was on the verge of a be­com­ing a failed State, Ho­sein said crime con­tin­ued to be the most wor­ry­ing is­sue fac­ing per­sons now.

Claim­ing it had “reached one of the high­est heights we have ever seen” as mur­ders had crossed 421 for the year so far, he said it had tak­en on a new face now it was “not on­ly adults un­der at­tack.”

Speak­ing dur­ing the Op­po­si­tion’s week­ly me­dia con­fer­ence at its’ Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, of­fice yes­ter­day, the MP re­ferred to the two shoot­ings at San­gre Grande and Ca­roni in the last week, where three chil­dren be­tween the ages of three and eight had be­come vic­tims.

Two chil­dren were shot last Thurs­day dur­ing a wake at Dar­marie Hill af­ter a gun­man opened fire on oc­cu­pants who were at­tend­ing a wake; while a third child was in­jured on Sat­ur­day when three gun­men en­tered a house in Kel­ly Vil­lage and opened fire on those who were seat­ed in the front yard.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area yes­ter­day– there were no rel­a­tives at the house which re­mained locked.

One man said the eight-year-old boy had suc­cess­ful­ly un­der­gone surgery yes­ter­day, while his 55-year-old grand­fa­ther An­tho­ny Gaye had suf­fered a shat­tered spine af­ter be­ing shot 15 times.

Fear­ing gun­men might re­turn to fin­ish the job, he urged re­porters to leave as he hus­tled to close his busi­ness place. He de­clined to speak oth­er­wise as he said he had his fam­i­ly to con­sid­er.

Claim­ing such grue­some at­tacks were now be­ing per­pe­trat­ed against in­no­cent chil­dren, Ho­sein said, “This is the re­sult of sev­en years of mis­man­age­ment and in­com­pe­tence by the Prime Min­is­ter who sits as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.”

He added, “No one is safe in T&T.

He al­so trained his guns on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds whom he ac­cused of al­so, not hav­ing a plan to get crime un­der con­trol.

He said, “We have enough laws on the books. What we need are the re­sources. What we need are the skills. What we need are the strate­gies. What new need is a plan in or­der to tack­le this run­way sit­u­a­tion of crime.”

Ar­gu­ing that law en­force­ment and the ju­di­cia­ry need­ed to be ad­e­quate­ly re­sourced in or­der to do their jobs prop­er­ly, Hus­sein al­so took the au­thor­i­ties to task for al­leged­ly us­ing the coun­try’s in­tel­li­gence ap­pa­ra­tus to score po­lit­i­cal points.

He ques­tioned why it was not be­ing used to go af­ter the crim­i­nal el­e­ments in­stead.

Ho­sein said it was un­ac­cept­able that thou­sands of il­le­gal firearms con­tin­ued to be smug­gled in­to the coun­try, end­ing up in the hands of crim­i­nals who were able to out-gun of­fi­cers as they had more so­phis­ti­cat­ed weapons.

He said the fail­ure by the State to ap­pre­hend these per­sons and stem the il­le­gal weapons flow had em­pow­ered the crim­i­nal el­e­ments to op­er­ate with­out fear, and had em­bold­ened them to car­ry out such acts.

He claimed, “They have dri­ven the coun­try and our cit­i­zens in­to pover­ty.”