PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER &

GAIL ALEXAN­DER

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has al­leged that a deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has been in con­tact with a mur­der ac­cused who was al­so in­volved in the Life­S­port project.

He made the al­le­ga­tions in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day dur­ing de­bate on a pri­vate mo­tion brought by the Op­po­si­tion, which con­demned the Gov­ern­ment for its fail­ure to deal with crime.

“Some of the seeds that was sown in 2010 to 2015 that are lead­ing to the dif­fi­cul­ties we face as a so­ci­ety to­day,” Young said.

He point­ed to sev­er­al de­ci­sions made un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, such as the dis­man­tling of the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit and the Life­S­port fi­as­co.

“There was mur­der, lest this coun­try for­get, mur­der came out of Life­S­port. Per­sons were mur­dered and it mush­roomed crim­i­nal­i­ty in the East-West Cor­ri­dor. A par­tic­u­lar area, a per­son is now in­car­cer­at­ed for the mur­der of a se­nior coun­sel, he was the pro­gramme man­ag­er of Life­S­port. He was sign­ing on be­half of the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary un­der a UNC gov­ern­ment. The same per­son who is now in con­tact with a deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC” said Young.

He added: “That is what their an­swer to crime was and they have the au­dac­i­ty to mis­lead the pop­u­la­tion. Life­s­port was born and bred by a big mouth per­son now on the ra­dio,” said Young.

Young said the UNC’s cur­rent stance on the bor­ders was al­so hyp­o­crit­i­cal giv­ing the de­ci­sion to scrap the off­shore pa­trol ves­sels and the dis­man­tling of the fa­cial recog­ni­tion cam­eras at the air­port.

Ear­li­er, in pi­lot­ing the mo­tion, UNC sen­a­tor Sad­dam Ho­sein said there was a cri­sis of con­fi­dence in T&T’s busi­ness sec­tor re­gard­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion and the on­ly in­dus­try that are ex­pand­ing now are fu­ner­al homes.

Say­ing he was speak­ing on be­half of vic­tims of crime, whom he list­ed, Ho­sein said there’s a sense of hope­less­ness among cit­i­zens.

“Crime has hit the busi­ness sec­tor very hard,” he said.

“Busi­ness peo­ple are the pri­ma­ry tar­gets of crim­i­nals, there’s now a cri­sis of con­fi­dence in the busi­ness sec­tor. Some peo­ple are go­ing away and for­eign in­vestors are fear­ful of set­ting up here,” he added.

Ho­sein said he re­ceived in­for­ma­tion yes­ter­day that a trav­el site had list­ed T&T as the “least re­quest­ed” des­ti­na­tion plus there’ve been oth­er trav­el ad­vi­sories about T&T.

Ac­cus­ing Gov­ern­ment of lack­ing so­lu­tions in­clud­ing on gen­der-based vi­o­lence, he cit­ed in­creas­es in crime which oc­curred dur­ing the PNM’s tenure as op­posed to the PP Gov­ern­ment’s when he said fig­ures were less.

“Yet the PNM is in de­nial that we’re in a crime cri­sis,” Ho­sein said.

Ho­sein said PNM’s 2015 elec­tion man­i­festo list­ed se­cu­ri­ty as a pri­or­i­ty, but a num­ber of promised in­no­va­tions haven’t ma­te­ri­alised.

“They had enough time, they did noth­ing and now it’s too late - time has run out on the PNM. But in a few months they’ll come with an­oth­er (man­i­festo) of ma­m­aguy and de­cep­tion,” he said.