While the T&T Cham­ber has un­der­scored calls for re­moval of the state of emer­gency (SoE) at its De­cem­ber 5 cut-off date and for a com­pre­hen­sive an­ti-crime plan, the trade union move­ment is in­sist­ing the SoE be re­moved im­me­di­ate­ly.Busi­ness and labour of­fi­cials spoke yes­ter­day about the Gov­ern­ment's move on Mon­day to re­move the 11 pm to 4 am cur­few and re­tain the SoE. Re­spond­ing to con­cerns about the ef­fect of the cur­few on var­i­ous sec­tors, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar met with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil on Mon­day and sub­se­quent­ly an­nounced the im­me­di­ate lift­ing of the cur­few.She said, how­ev­er, that the state of emer­gency re­mained in place.The cur­few had ex­ist­ed in six re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion ar­eas when the SoE be­gan on Au­gust 21. It was sub­se­quent­ly ex­tend­ed to 11 oth­er ar­eas and T&T's mar­itime bor­ders, putting a to­tal of 17 ar­eas un­der cur­few.The Gov­ern­ment has re­served the right to im­pose lim­it­ed cur­fews when and where nec­es­sary, the PM said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the SoE was suc­cess­ful, al­though not to­tal­ly. But she said the SoE and cur­few "saved "T&T."Wel­com­ing the end of the cur­few, T&T Cham­ber CEO, Kather­ine Ku­mar said: "We're hap­py the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the im­pact on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and al­so par­tic­u­lar­ly the hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try which en­dured sig­nif­i­cant loss­es di­rect­ly due to the cur­few."Al­so, those em­ployed in that sec­tor were the ones least able to af­ford any re­duc­tion in in­come," she added.Ku­mar said that sit­u­a­tion had prompt­ed the Cham­ber's re­cent call for a re­view of the ben­e­fits of the con­tin­u­ance of the cur­few."We had no prob­lems with the SoE re­main­ing, that is, un­til De­cem­ber 5-and that's still our po­si­tion," she said." We've heard Gov­ern­ment has left the doors open if there is need to re­in­state the cur­few and we trust that need will not arise and the rel­e­vant agen­cies have been able to put crime ini­tia­tives in place and we won't see a re­turn of crime as it was be­fore or get­ting worse."

Ku­mar said while the Cham­ber ac­cept­ed that there had been a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous of­fences dur­ing the pe­ri­od of the SoE and cur­few as sta­tis­tics in­di­cat­ed, the Cham­ber re­mained sup­port­ive of the SoE as on­ly one of gov­ern­ment's crime-fight­ing tools."We're hope­ful the ad­di­tion­al mea­sures and ini­tia­tives stat­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter will en­sure some lev­el of sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the re­duc­tion in crime, now and even af­ter the end of the SoE," she said."Up to re­cent­ly, we heard sev­er­al an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives men­tioned."How­ev­er, we must en­sure all ini­tia­tives were con­nect­ed in­to a sol­id com­pre­hen­sive an­ti-crime plan."We recog­nise that crime-fight­ing meth­ods ex­tend be­yond mere crime-fight­ing. In this re­gard, the pro­vi­sion of jobs in the com­mu­ni­ties is a very good ini­tia­tive."We will want to know though, how it will be done and whether it will be through Gov­ern­ment so­cial pro­grammes as the Cham­ber has con­cerns about the con­tin­u­ing sums of mon­ey ex­pend­ed on so­cial pro­grammes."

T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Do­minic Hadeed and Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion head Gre­go­ry Aboud are over­seas. Natuc pres­i­dent Michael An­nisette didn't re­spond to calls.Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers' Union pres­i­dent Joseph Re­my com­ment­ed yes­ter­day on the cur­few/SoE."We're unim­pressed with what was de­liv­ered yes­ter­day (Mon­day)," Re­my said."We're re­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed the SoE was not lift­ed, so we're more con­vinced now the SoE was called to clamp down on the civ­il lib­er­ties of trade unions."Why lift the cur­few and keep the SoE if you say you have crime un­der con­trol?"All the reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the SoE ap­pear tar­get­ed at the trade unions...But the sit­u­a­tion won't af­fect our planned meet­ing on No­vem­ber 19, since it's an in­door meet­ing at Point Fortin."We're call­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter to be bold enough to ad­mit a mis­take was made and that the SoE was a colos­sal fail­ure and should there­fore be lift­ed im­me­di­ate­ly."It's clear it was geared to clamp down on our pro­posed na­tion­al shut­down ear­li­er in the year, and it has been ex­tend­ed to pre­vent our mo­bil­i­sa­tion to chal­lenge the five per cent wage cap."Re­my ex­pressed con­cern that the po­lice force has been burnt out by..."chas­ing ghosts dur­ing the SoE and now when the re­al ban­dits have time to emerge with­out a cur­few, po­lice man­pow­er re­sources may not be up to par."