Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

PNM coun­cil­lor for Pleas­antville, Robert Par­ris, is ap­peal­ing to new San Fer­nan­do may­or Dr Navi Mu­radali to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty for all coun­cil­lors be­cause of T&T's grow­ing crime rate. Speak­ing at the cor­po­ra­tion's statu­to­ry meet­ing at City Hall, Har­ris Prom­e­nade, yes­ter­day, Par­ris said he was trau­ma­tised by the shoot­ing death of his friend, Qadir George, 30.

George was shot out­side his work­place. Al­so in­jured in the shoot­ing were George's co-work­ers Kadisha Vin­cent, of An­drea Dri­ve, Pleas­antville, and Re­ny Sotil­lo, 31, of Blitz Vil­lage, Pleas­antville. They work at a bar on Cof­fee Street. The bar was man­aged by George.

Par­ris said two weeks be­fore George's mur­der he spoke with him about the in­creas­ing crime in the South city. He added: "I am dis­traught be­cause we need to do some­thing about the crime. I will try not to be emo­tion­al but I know Qadir's moth­er very well. "We spoke about the safe­ty of the cit­i­zens and I am con­cerned about the safe­ty of our coun­cil­lors. At this lev­el our lives are at risk."

He added that the coun­cil­lor for Mon Re­pos/Navet saw a bul­let hole where he resided and that was a cause for grave con­cern. "We have of­fices and we need to have se­cu­ri­ty at those of­fices. Our lives are at risk so I am ask­ing that you raise these is­sues re­gard­ing se­cu­ri­ty," Paris said.

Mean­while, Mu­radali said se­cu­ri­ty was high on his cor­po­ra­tion's agen­da. He ex­plained that an au­dit would be­gin short­ly around the city to iden­ti­fy the CCTV cam­eras which were not func­tion­al with­in the city's bound­aries. "Once the au­dit is com­plet­ed, we will re­quest a pro­pos­al for CCTV along High Street, Har­ris Prom­e­nade, Cof­fee Street, Cipero Street, Mara­bel­la mar­ket and Skin­ner Park," he added.

He al­so ex­plained he would meet with the Po­lice and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty to crack down on noisy bars. Mu­radali said he al­so would make an ap­peal to the Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan, to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty for coun­cil­lors.

"I am not too sure about the par­tic­u­lars but if there is a threat on Par­ris' life or any oth­er mem­ber of coun­cil, I want to hear about it," Mu­radali said. He added that meet­ings al­so would be held with busi­ness peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do to dis­cuss se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.