How to prevent drug trafficking, the spate of guns available to the criminal class and human trafficking to and from T&T? Build the Maritime Security Wall.
The Maritime Security Wall is a repurposing of six to eight oil barges and platforms to create operational facilities three miles out at sea, to be manned by law enforcement personnel (including police, coast guard, army, customs).
Connected by radar and equipped with fast interceptor coast guard boats, helicopter response, drones and other cutting edge technologies, these platforms would provide a virtual wall around Trinidad and Tobago and oversea the movement of all marine craft to and from this country including pleasure, fishing or commercial, and ensure that all are directed to dedicated landing sites and not allowed to drive up any beach or up any waterway unexamined as is currently the case.
These dedicated landing sites (including fishing villages and yacht clubs) must have law enforcement and Customs personnel to examine the movement of all material and deal with issues of contraband and duties.
Matched with a plan to open and examine if not unstuff all shipping containers on the nation's ports, this initiative would have a massive impact on many of the illegal activities currently plaguing this nation and would collapse many of our gang and white-collar criminal enterprises.
So the question is, without a better option to replace it, why has neither the United National Congress nor People's National Movement governments seen it fit to build this wall, despite having multiples of quotations from both local contractors and as far away as China gathering dust in the Ministry of National Security? Why is neither party interested in securing this nation's borders and stemming the flow of narcotics and arms and ammunition to and through this island? Why are they paying lip service to crime, aware that the police service cannot win a battle against illegal guns if high powered weapons and bullet proof jackets can be brought in by any boat on any beach or up any river as is currently allowed?
The nation we want is on the other side of good governance built around sound management principle, progressive ideas and the will to make T&T a better place. Join us...
Phillip Alexander