SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Crime has de­creased since the state of emer­gency took ef­fect. Those were the views ex­pressed by Nal Ram­s­ingh, head of the Cou­va/Point Lisas Cham­ber and Bil­ly Ali, head of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber, yes­ter­day. Ali said the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber and oth­er busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions met with Trade Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz and sug­gest­ed a change in cur­few hours. He said the Cham­ber has no prob­lem with the state of emer­gency re­main­ing in place but busi­ness­es were be­ing ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by the cur­few hours.

"We don't want to sug­gest any­thing to the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty that is go­ing to in­ter­fere with his plans and what he is do­ing dur­ing the cur­few hours," Ali said. Ram­s­ingh said the Cou­va busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is still very con­cerned about crime. He said crime in the dis­trict has been dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced since the state of emer­gency came in­to ef­fect. Ram­s­ingh said Cou­va would like to see ad­di­tion­al po­lice and equip­ment be­ing al­lo­cat­ed to the dis­trict when the state of emer­gency ends to curb crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.