Kevon Felmine

Pres­i­dent of the Pe­nal/Debe Cham­ber of Com­merce Lin­coln Rag­birs­ingh is call­ing for in­creased se­cu­ri­ty in the Siparia con­stituen­cy. He made the call af­ter for­mer pres­i­dent of the Cham­ber, Edi­son Dood­nath, was bru­tal­ly beat­en by armed ban­dits at his Pe­nal home last Thurs­day. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, at around 3 am, Dood­nath was asleep at his Ramjohn Trace home when armed ban­dits en­tered his premis­es. Dood­nath was awak­ened by strange sounds and saw two men in his bed­room. The men pro­ceed­ed to beat him with gun butts. The in­trud­ers robbed Dood­nath of more than $20,000 in jew­el­ry and cash be­fore es­cap­ing. Dood­nath was tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he re­ceived emer­gency treat­ment, in­clud­ing 25 stitch­es to his head and up­per body. He is re­port­ed to be in a sta­ble con­di­tion.

Dood­nath, a found­ing mem­ber of the cham­ber, served as pres­i­dent from 2008 to 2010. Rag­birs­ingh called on the Gov­ern­ment to take ur­gent ac­tion. He said the Pe­nal Po­lice Sta­tion is not equipped to deal with the lev­el of crime in the com­mu­ni­ty. "We have a sit­u­a­tion where the po­lice are un­der equipped and have a lack of man­pow­er. We have three Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment who are in the Gov­ern­ment, two of whom are from the Pe­nal area. Yes I know they are do­ing things to up­grade and up­lift but high crime has reached home." Rag­birs­ingh said crime is out of con­trol in the Pe­nal/Debe area. "Ban­dits have moved down in­to the area. There is a lot of crim­i­nal mi­gra­tion go­ing on here. As the area is be­ing de­vel­oped the crim­i­nals are com­ing in­to the area. "The Pe­nal/Debe com­mu­ni­ty is rapid­ly grow­ing as busi­ness­es are pop­ping up all over here. Any­where you have growth, you have to grow every­thing else. The busi­ness­men cre­ate the growth and the State now has to do its part," he said.