Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Just eight months be­fore he was fired for fail­ing to take a breathal­yser test, for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Collin Par­tap was lament­ing that cit­i­zens were not chang­ing their al­co­hol con­sump­tion pat­terns de­spite the breathal­yser leg­is­la­tion. Iron­i­cal­ly, his be­hav­iour when asked by po­lice to sub­mit him­self for a breathal­yser test formed part of the rea­son why Par­tap was fired by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Sun­day night. Dur­ing his speech de­liv­ered at the launch of the Na­tion­al Drug Coun­cil's You De­cide project on De­cem­ber 8, 2011, Par­tap spoke about the im­por­tance of the breathal­yser. He said the You De­cide project was in­flu­enced by the in­tro­duc­tion of the breathal­yser and the con­tin­ued abuse of al­co­hol. Quot­ing sta­tis­tics from the Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Unit of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, Par­tap, at that time, re­vealed that 511 peo­ple were charged with dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol since the act had been en­forced.

How­ev­er, Par­tap lament­ed that many more peo­ple were test­ed based on the sus­pi­cions of the of­fi­cers on du­ty. " This shows that de­spite the pres­ence of the breathal­yser, peo­ple have not changed their con­sump­tion pat­terns. This project is there­fore ex­treme­ly im­por­tant, es­pe­cial­ly as we ap­proach our fes­tive sea­sons of Christ­mas and Car­ni­val," Par­tap had said. Now eight months af­ter his state­ments, mem­bers of the Na­tion­al Drug Coun­cil, which falls un­der the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, say they were dis­ap­point­ed by Par­tap's de­ten­tion and sub­se­quent dis­missal. The Na­tion­al Drug Coun­cil com­pris­es of sev­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions which work with Gov­ern­ment to re­duce drugs and al­co­hol abuse. Of­fi­cials of Na­tion­al Al­co­hol and Drug Abuse Pre­ven­tion Pro­gramme (NADAPP) were un­avail­able for com­ment yes­ter­day.