Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

While most of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is in sup­port of the state of emer­gency (SoE), the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment for a com­pre­hen­sive crime plan. The cham­ber said with­out a com­pre­hen­sive plan, the Gov­ern­ment can­not make a re­al dent in crime. "So we are in sup­port of the SOE, but we are hop­ing that it is just one mea­sure of a ful­ly com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy that would seek to re­duce crime in T&T, said Cather­ine Ku­mar, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the T&T Cham­ber.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day, Ku­mar said the com­pre­hen­sive plan must in­clude an en­tire re­form of the jus­tice sys­tem as cit­i­zens are still wait­ing years for cas­es to be heard. There's al­so the prob­lem of over­crowd­ed pris­ons.

A sus­tain­able crime plan must in­clude the ef­fi­cient use of tech­nol­o­gy, Ku­mar said.For ex­am­ple, she not­ed that video con­fer­enc­ing could proved to be use­ful for per­sons who are over­seas and are un­able to phys­i­cal­ly ap­pear in court to give ev­i­dence. Recog­nis­ing that some at­tempts have been made to in­stall few closed cir­cuit TVs in T&T, Ku­mar said there was a need have many more in­stalled. She point­ed to the Unit­ed King­dom po­lice us­ing their CCTV footage to iden­ti­fy ar­rest and charge peo­ple who were re­spon­si­ble for last month's ri­ots and ram­pant loot­ing on the streets of Lon­don. Ku­mar said tech­nol­o­gy sys­tems must be linked through­out po­lice sta­tions, Li­cens­ing of­fices, the ju­di­cial sys­tem, where­by cit­i­zens' in­for­ma­tion and his­to­ry could be read­i­ly ac­cessed.

Ex­ten­sion of SoE

The ini­tial 15-day pe­ri­od of the state of emer­gency and an ex­ten­sion of the state of emer­gency must not be in vain, as busi­ness­es have been feel­ing the pinch and have in­curred sig­nif­i­cant loss­es, said Ku­mar.

She said some busi­ness­es have in­di­cat­ed that they may have to close down if the SoE goes on for much longer. She not­ed that among the cham­ber's mem­ber­ship, there has been mixed views about the ex­ten­sion of the SoE, but is hop­ing that the cur­few hours be ex­tend­ed from 12 am to 4 am, not on­ly to ac­com­mo­date busi­ness­es, but al­so em­ploy­ees who are trav­el­ling long dis­tances to get to work.

Ku­mar said T&T Cham­ber would sup­port the ex­ten­sion if the mea­sure of suc­cess is more sub­stan­tial than the num­ber of ar­rests and guns and am­mu­ni­tion seized.

There is al­ready a con­cern that the num­ber of ar­rests made dur­ing the SoE may not processed in a speedy man­ner be­cause the High Court is on va­ca­tion un­til Sep­tem­ber 15, she said. "This is against an ex­ist­ing back log of cas­es." She is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to meet with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to give them the as­sur­ance that the SoE was not based on ad hoc plans, but there are sub­stan­tial mea­sures of suc­cess and a well-thought out, com­pre­hen­sive crime plan in place. This, she said, was very im­por­tant be­cause the Gov­ern­ment's cred­i­bil­i­ty is at stake. She not­ed that on some lev­el, the Gov­ern­ment was not speak­ing with one voice and it must be mind­ful that it does not au­gur well for it.

Ku­mar said en­force­ment of the law is al­so im­per­a­tive, not on­ly in this ex­er­cise, but must be an on­go­ing process. She ques­tioned how many peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed for acts that the Gov­ern­ment in­sti­tut­ed, like dri­ving and speak­ing on cell­phones and why some may feel com­fort­able to dis­card a traf­fic tick­et, be­liev­ing it would not be pur­sued. Ku­mar said the sys­tem re­quires more po­lice pres­ence, but said the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er ar­tic­u­lat­ed that there were suf­fi­cient po­lice on the books, but that is not re­flect­ed in the po­lice's pres­ence on the streets.

Se­cu­ri­ty costs for busi­ness­es

Asked what kind of im­me­di­ate out­come would bring some de­gree of sat­is­fac­tion to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty af­ter the SoE, Ku­mar said an un­der­stand­ing of the crime plan, the rea­sons for the SoE and an in­di­ca­tion of the mea­sures achieved. She said these re­sults were im­por­tant be­cause the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty sac­ri­ficed a lot and the cham­ber was look­ing at this ini­tia­tive with long-term goals in mind.

She ex­plained that the busi­ness sec­tor has been suf­fer­ing at the hands of crime for too long. She said while the cham­ber recog­nis­es that over the last five years there were at­tempts made to re­duce crime, "we are not where we should be." "One mur­der is too much," Ku­mar said.

She not­ed that crime, cou­pled with the glob­al eco­nom­ic down­turn, have se­vere­ly af­fect­ed the busi­ness sec­tor, so much so that T&T ranked a dis­mal 84 out of 139 coun­tries in the com­pet­i­tive­ness rat­ings in the 2010 Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness In­dex. The re­port al­so con­firmed that crime was the most prob­lem­at­ic is­sue for busi­ness­es in the last three years and as a con­se­quence, T&T ranked 131 out 139 coun­tries with re­gards to busi­ness cost of crime and vi­o­lence and for or­gan­ised crime, 99 out of 139 coun­tries.

Ku­mar said the cham­ber con­duct­ed a sur­vey last year and the re­sults showed di­rect costs at­trib­uted to crime in­creased by 20 per cent over the last nine years, and in­di­rect costs in­creased by 57 per cent over the same pe­ri­od. These fig­ures in­clud­ed the de­cline of em­ploy­ees' morale and ab­sence of em­ploy­ees due to their homes be­ing bur­glarised. Crime has al­so im­pact­ed on di­rect for­eign in­vest­ments be­cause in­vestors look for at­trac­tive des­ti­na­tions to op­er­ate their busi­ness­es, so the busi­ness sec­tor has been hurt­ing for a while, Ku­mar said.

Ku­mar calls for sup­port dur­ing SoE

Cather­ine Ku­mar is call­ing on all or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­di­vid­u­als to sup­port one an­oth­er in this time be­cause the en­tire na­tion is af­fect­ed. She is ap­peal­ing to own­ers of prop­er­ty and banks to be un­der­stand­ing dur­ing the state of emer­gency. She ex­plained that pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els have dropped be­cause busi­ness have to re­duce its hours and cut out shifts, which means that some em­ploy­ees may be work­ing for less pay. The SoE, she said, has come at very sen­si­tive time: school will be re­open­ing next week, par­ents are still in the process of buy­ing books and new uni­forms, peo­ple are lin­ing up in banks for the salaries and to pay bills, and may be frus­trat­ed at be­ing un­able to meet all their fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments due to lim­it­ed earn­ings.