Yvonne Ba­boolal

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, civ­il groups and the Op­po­si­tion have all dis­missed Na­tion­al?Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack?Warn­er's an­nounce­ment on Tues­day that the crime sit­u­a­tion is not as grim as it seems. Some have even ex­pressed sur­prise at his state­ment. Warn­er, at a press con­fer­ence, us­ing sta­tis­tics to back up his claim, said there was an al­most three per cent re­duc­tion in mur­ders be­tween Jan­u­ary and Tues­day, com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year.

"We don't feel the same way...The sit­u­a­tion is grim and needs ur­gent at­ten­tion," Cather­ine Ku­mar, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce, said. "We were quite sur­prised at his com­ments." Ku­mar said pre­vi­ous re­port­ed sta­tis­tics ac­tu­al­ly showed an in­crease in crime. "But I imag­ine he has the cor­rect facts," she added. Ku­mar said a three per cent re­duc­tion is in­signif­i­cant since there are way too many mur­ders.

"It's not at an ac­cept­able lev­el," she not­ed. Ku­mar said the crime sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ues to make the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty very un­easy. "We have not been able to de­vel­op some­thing to curb crime in a se­ri­ous way, par­tic­u­lar­ly mur­ders, and there is a con­cern," she said. Gre­go­ry Aboud, pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA), said T&T "is in the midst of an­oth­er very se­ri­ous and dan­ger­ous pe­ri­od of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

"One can un­der­stand Warn­er's de­fen­sive re­ac­tion to the re­port­ing of crime sta­tis­tics by the me­dia," he said. "Hav­ing just as­sumed of­fice, one can un­der­stand he is not re­spon­si­ble for the very se­ri­ous crime sit­u­a­tion, nor could he be ex­pect­ed to have any dras­tic im­pact in the short time he has been the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al?Se­cu­ri­ty. "But the min­is­ter should re­alise very quick­ly that cit­i­zens will not be sat­is­fied with a three per cent or 30 per cent re­duc­tion in mur­ders.

"We are all aware that over the past ten years there has been an in­crease of be­tween 400 per cent and 500 per cent in se­ri­ous crimes, par­tic­u­lar­ly mur­ders." He said any at­tempt to min­imise the se­ri­ous­ness of crime in the down­town city cen­tre ac­tu­al­ly caus­es peo­ple to be­come more un­easy and scared. "Peo­ple as­sume that DO­MA is not tak­ing their safe­ty as se­ri­ous­ly as it should be tak­en," he added.

He said any sim­i­lar at­tempt by the Gov­ern­ment to min­imise the se­ri­ous­ness of crime would al­so re­sult in cit­i­zens los­ing con­fi­dence in the State's abil­i­ty to pro­tect them. Aboud said the tra­di­tion­al po­si­tions of gov­ern­ments was to speak about their ac­com­plish­ments. "But the in­fa­mous re­mark by a pre­vi­ous min­is­ter that there was a 'de­crease in the in­crease' in crime is all we need re­mem­ber to re­in­force this point."

He said DO­MA hoped Warn­er would do away with these tra­di­tion­al po­si­tions. "We have hopes he will re­store con­fi­dence in cit­i­zens by ac­cept­ing we are in the midst of an­oth­er very se­ri­ous and dan­ger­ous pe­ri­od of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty." The Tu­na­puna Cham­ber had a sim­i­lar po­si­tion. Pres­i­dent Taran Singh said the re­al­i­ty was that the crime rate was still very high. "A three per cent re­duc­tion is like say­ing you had 100 mur­ders and now you have 97," he said.

"We want a 20 per cent re­duc­tion. There is a lot of work to be done still. "While we are not ques­tion­ing the fig­ures, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in a de­vel­op­ing coun­try can't ac­cept a three per cent crime re­duc­tion." Singh said the cham­ber re­mained op­ti­mistic about Warn­er's ca­pa­bil­i­ties. "The min­is­ter has crime plans and we are ex­pect­ing to see more al­lo­ca­tions to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in the up­com­ing bud­get," he said.

Ibrahim Ali, of the San Juan Cham­ber, said no one could con­vince him crime has de­creased when he sees on a dai­ly ba­sis the num­ber of mur­ders tak­ing place. "In the San Juan/El?So­cor­ro con­stituen­cy, we are very un­easy," he said. Ali said the cham­ber agrees with the min­is­ter's plans to have more po­lice man­pow­er and a greater pres­ence on the streets. He not­ed, how­ev­er, that prob­lems in the court sys­tem al­so need­ed to be ad­dressed.

Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert asked: "How on earth you can have a three per cent re­duc­tion in crime? "There are more mur­ders this year than last year. What non­sense is he talk­ing about?" Fix­in T&T, a civ­il so­ci­ety group, said it places no cre­dence in any­thing Warn­er has to say. "We re­it­er­ate our po­si­tion that he should not hold any min­is­te­r­i­al post un­til there is a favourable out­come of a thor­ough and ef­fi­cient in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to all mat­ters con­cern­ing him." The group called on the Prime Min­is­ter to pro­vide a de­tailed ex­pla­na­tion to cit­i­zens to jus­ti­fy Warn­er's pres­ence in her Cab­i­net.