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Friday, July 18, 2025

Senate votes 29-0 for amended DNA bill

by

20120208

Af­ter a marathon 14-hour sit­ting of the Sen­ate, Gov­ern­ment se­cured pas­sage of the con­tro­ver­sial DNA Bill, with the re­quired spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty as all sen­a­tors present-29-vot­ed in favour. None vot­ed against and there were no ab­sten­tions. The leg­is­la­tion, pre­sent­ed by Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney, was ap­proved yes­ter­day morn­ing af­ter ma­jor con­ces­sions were made by the Gov­ern­ment. Gov­ern­ment was forced to make a ma­jor com­pro­mise on a pro­vi­sion re­lat­ing to the per­ma­nent re­ten­tion of DNA pro­files. Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors Faris Al-Rawi and Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors El­ton Prescott and He­len Dray­ton en­gaged in lengthy dis­cus­sions with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan dur­ing the com­mit­tee stage for that mea­sure to be amend­ed.

In the end, Ram­lo­gan agreed to a com­pro­mise po­si­tion, se­cur­ing the sup­port of the Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent bench­es. Ram­lo­gan said the leg­is­la­tion was a crit­i­cal el­e­ment in the Gov­ern­ment's fight against crime in T&T. The bill is ex­pect­ed to be tak­en to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for ap­proval of the amend­ments.


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