Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

T&T is a vul­ner­a­ble coun­try, says Plan­ning and the Econ­o­my Min­is­ter Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie. He said the in­for­ma­tion gath­ered dur­ing the state of emer­gency in­di­cat­ed the coun­try's vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Tewarie said the coun­try had to take charge of its land and sea space. "We are com­mit­ted to do­ing that so that this coun­try could re­al­ly de­vel­op un­der con­di­tions of se­cu­ri­ty and min­i­mal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to all the at­tacks on our in­tegri­ty as a coun­try," Tewarie said. He was the fea­ture speak­er at the launch of the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty's (CDA) newest se­cu­ri­ty fleet at Tem­blado­ra Po­lice Post in Ch­aguara­mas yes­ter­day. Tewarie said na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty was third out of sev­en in­ter­con­nect­ed pil­lars for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

He said an over­ar­ch­ing ob­jec­tive of Gov­ern­ment's ac­tion against crime was the elim­i­na­tion of fear for self and prop­er­ty. He said: "Crime and law and or­der, how­ev­er, is one of five strate­gic pil­lars of fo­cus for the Gov­ern­ment in its medi­um-term pol­i­cy frame­work called In­no­va­tion for Last­ing Pros­per­i­ty, which takes us through the pe­ri­od 2011 to 2014." Ac­cord­ing to polls and sur­veys con­duct­ed, Tewarie said cit­i­zens' re­spons­es re­vealed that crime, law and or­der and van­dal­ism were the biggest prob­lems in the coun­try. He said while crime re­mained a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge, it could be ad­dressed.

He said among some of Gov­ern­ment's medi­um-term ob­jec­tives were:

• a 25 per cent re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crimes an­nu­al­ly from the 2011 fig­ure;

• in­creased con­fi­dence in the jus­tice sys­tem through ap­pro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment, sen­tenc­ing and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of of­fend­ers;

• re­duc­tion in the num­ber of gangs in op­er­a­tion; and

• achieve­ment of an 80 per cent homi­cide de­tec­tion rate.

Tewarie said the sup­port from the so­cial sec­tor for law en­force­ment was al­so im­por­tant. "To­day sig­nals an ex­ten­sion of these ob­jec­tives here in a spe­cif­ic lo­ca­tion called Ch­aguara­mas," he said. "It makes no sense to have a vi­sion geared to de­vel­op and beau­ti­fy a park such as this, a com­mu­ni­ty or any place for that mat­ter, if the peo­ple who vis­it have to vis­it look­ing over their shoul­ders be­cause of fear; be­cause of a lack of con­fi­dence and se­cu­ri­ty and be­ing afraid that what­ev­er they are do­ing, some­body is look­ing at them to see how they can prey up­on them." He said that was counter-pro­duc­tive to de­vel­op­ment.

Tewarie said crim­i­nal and an­ti-so­cial ac­tiv­i­ty would not on­ly threat­en vis­i­tors' en­joy­ment of the fa­cil­i­ties but al­so busi­ness­es and po­ten­tial in­vestors. "Se­cu­ri­ty is nec­es­sary for the cli­mate of trust and con­fi­dence to grow even in an area such as this," he said. "In oth­er words, crime is a plague to so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment...It eats away at the soul of the cit­i­zen­ry at every lev­el."