No bail for hold­ers of il­le­gal firearms!

That’s part of pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to be brought to Par­lia­ment soon, says Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

He spoke of the leg­is­la­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day af­ter Op­po­si­tion ques­tions on the re­cent up­surge in crime when 10 peo­ple were shot and six died. (See ed­i­to­r­i­al on Page A16)

Young said the deaths were caused by use of firearms.

“Gov­ern­ment in­tends to short­ly bring par­tic­u­lar leg­is­la­tion to deal with the scourge of il­le­gal firearms. This leg­is­la­tion is specif­i­cal­ly to deal with those who want to car­ry il­le­gal firearms and to deal with tak­ing away their right to bail for be­ing in pos­ses­sion of il­le­gal firearms,” Young said.

“It al­so pro­pos­es to in­crease fines and sen­tences for those held with il­le­gal firearms. This leg­is­la­tion will re­quire a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage—and T&T will see who’s pre­pared to take their fight to the crim­i­nals to deal with il­le­gal firearms.”

On in­ter­im mea­sures to deal with the crime up­surge, Young said af­ter he re­turned to T&T last week he held an emer­gency meet­ing with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, De­fence Force and in­tel­li­gence agen­cies on the sit­u­a­tion. He lat­er met with heads of di­vi­sions to launch cer­tain in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven op­er­a­tions which he said he wouldn’t de­tail.

Young al­so replied on re­ports that a woman con­duct­ing busi­ness at the Point Fortin Im­mi­gra­tion of­fice was in­struct­ed to wipe the sin­door (red dot) off her fore­head.

He said, “The fe­male pass­port ap­pli­cant was asked by the in­ter­view­ing of­fi­cer to ad­just the sin­door on her fore­head as it ex­tend­ed be­yond her hair­line. She wasn’t in­struct­ed to re­move it as re­port­ed by the me­dia.”

He said as soon as he learned of the in­ci­dent con­cern­ing the woman he got on to Im­mi­gra­tion, who con­tact­ed the woman and the Mon­day af­ter she was fa­cil­i­tat­ed and there was no re­moval for her re­li­gious sym­bol.

Young list­ed the 16 In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ICAO) stip­u­la­tions re­quired by Im­mi­gra­tion for is­suance of ma­chine-read­able pass­ports. This ranged from stip­u­la­tions that head cov­er­ing, head­dress or fa­cial or­na­ments not ob­scure the face, to the re­quire­ment that the face should be in sharp fo­cus and clear.

He said Im­mi­gra­tion has un­der­tak­en a sen­si­ti­sa­tion pro­gramme to re­mind of­fi­cers to be cul­tur­al­ly aware of re­li­gious prac­tices across T&T while al­so meet­ing ICAO re­quire­ments.