Richard Lord

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan says T&T is per­ceived to be one of the most un­safe places in the world. Ram­lo­gan made the state­ment while re­spond­ing to the find­ings of the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme's draft re­port on Hu­man De­vel­op­ment and Cit­i­zen Se­cu­ri­ty in the Caribbean. Ram­lo­gan said the re­port showed the na­tion's in­ter­na­tion­al im­age was neg­a­tive long be­fore the state of emer­gency was de­clared last month. He said there was the per­cep­tion that T&T was the mur­der cap­i­tal of the Caribbean and a very dan­ger­ous place to live. Ram­lo­gan said that im­pres­sion was formed af­ter al­most a decade of in­suf­fi­cient ac­tion against crim­i­nals in T&T. Ram­lo­gan said the find­ings sup­port the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship's strong and de­ci­sive de­ci­sion to im­pose a state of emer­gency to ef­fec­tive­ly deal with the crim­i­nal el­e­ment in the coun­try.

He said the draft UNDP re­port iden­ti­fies the ex­tent of the prob­lem the Gov­ern­ment in­her­it­ed when it as­sumed of­fice al­most 16 months ago. "It jus­ti­fies our re­solve to deal with the crim­i­nal gangs in T&T, in or­der to en­sure the law-abid­ing cit­i­zens are safer in T&T," Ram­lo­gan added. He said the Gov­ern­ment was al­so com­mit­ted to im­ple­ment­ing sev­er­al so­cial re­lief ini­tia­tives to help those in need. "If the Gov­ern­ment had not tak­en the de­ci­sive ac­tion, the crim­i­nal gangs would have con­tin­ued to gain ground on the law abid­ing cit­i­zens...The tail was wag­ging the dog," he said. "The can­cer of crim­i­nal­i­ty must be stopped in its tracks." More than 1,500 peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed and sev­er­al guns and large quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion have been found since the im­po­si­tion of the state of emer­gency and cur­few in T&T.