A poll con­duct­ed by the North Amer­i­can Caribbean Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion shows strong sup­port for the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency (SoE), de­clared on Au­gust 21. Peo­ple's views, how­ev­er, tend to di­verge on the cur­few hours with most be­ing sup­port­ive and some call­ing to end the cur­few al­to­geth­er say­ing it had served its pur­pose and is not so ef­fec­tive as dur­ing the ini­tial stage. Cit­i­zens note that the cur­few should be im­posed on the en­tire coun­try and not lim­it­ed to spe­cif­ic ar­eas since crim­i­nals could re­lo­cate from hotspots and grav­i­tate to com­mu­ni­ties not un­der cur­few re­stric­tions. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 410 re­spon­dents were in­ter­viewed at ran­dom, re­flect­ing the de­mo­graph­ic com­po­si­tion of the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion.

Asked if they sup­port­ed the state of emer­gency when it was ini­tial­ly de­clared, 74 per cent said yes, point­ing out that it has served more good than harm pro­vid­ing peo­ple with a sense of safe­ty. The over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty said the state of emer­gency has served as a de­ter­rent to crime. Peo­ple in­di­cate they had reached a sat­u­ra­tion point in tol­er­at­ing crime es­pe­cial­ly homi­cides and ap­plaud the Gov­ern­ment for try­ing some­thing to bring down the crime rate. How­ev­er, when asked if they back the ex­ten­sion of the state of emer­gency through De­cem­ber, sup­port slipped to 64 per cent with young peo­ple say­ing it has af­fect­ed their so­cial life. Mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty al­so com­plained that the cur­few has im­pact­ed on busi­ness with their rev­enues falling.

With re­gards to the cur­few hours, 43 per cent pre­fer 11 pm to 5 am, with 24 per cent say­ing they would like to re­vert back to the 9 pm to 5 am hours, while oth­ers want the cur­few to end al­to­geth­er say­ing it is too dis­rup­tive to their lives. Though sup­port­ive of any mea­sure de­signed to re­duce crime, re­spon­dents feel there is need for a state of emer­gency in To­ba­go as well.

PM's ap­proval rat­ings hold steady

The find­ings al­so show the Prime Min­is­ter's ap­proval rat­ings hold­ing, with those of the Op­po­si­tion Leader slip­ping on the state of emer­gency is­sue. Asked if they sup­port­ed the state of emer­gency when it was first de­clared, 74 per cent said yes.