SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Peo­ple pur­chas­ing video cam­eras to en­hance their se­cu­ri­ty at home and in their busi­ness­places may get a tax break in the com­ing fis­cal year, says Cou­va North MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al. She was speak­ing with the T&T Guardian on Sat­ur­day. Ram­di­al said she has had dis­cus­sions with Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai who has tak­en the idea in­to con­sid­er­a­tion and would be set­ting up a team to look at the fea­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing the tax break avail­able in the 2013-2014 bud­get.

The MP said the idea came from mem­bers of the pub­lic who com­plained that the costs of se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras were too ex­pen­sive for or­di­nary house­hold­ers while busi­ness­men said pro­fes­sion­al se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems can cost more than $25,000. She said the cam­eras were a good de­ter­rent to crime but not­ed that peo­ple must get the prop­er ad­vice when pur­chas­ing sys­tems.

Ram­di­al said sys­tems that record high res­o­lu­tion im­ages with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing im­ages stored at a re­mote lo­ca­tion may be among the bet­ter op­tions for con­sumers. She said she al­so was look­ing at the Hu­man Traf­fick­ing Bill to take ac­tion against the own­ers of broth­els op­er­at­ing in the con­stituen­cy of Cou­va North.

Ram­di­al said she met with con­stituents last week who com­plained that two broth­els in the area were the root cause of crime in the com­mu­ni­ty. She said a raid of a well-known ho­tel at Chase Vil­lage two weeks ago by Se­nior Sup De­o­dath Du­lalchan and In­sp John­ny Abra­ham nabbed 11 women from Colom­bia who were charged with pros­ti­tu­tion. Ram­di­al said she would be speak­ing to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to en­sure the law is en­forced.