The Government's firing of 300 officers from the Special Anti-Crime Unit of T&T (Sautt) officers will weaken the fight against a murderous criminal element running largely unchecked throughout the country, says Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley.
"The latest action of the Government in firing 300 Sautt officers, many of whom received intensive, expensive, specialised training in crime-fighting is only another act which cannot help but weaken our defences against a rampant, murderous criminal element which still runs largely unchecked throughout T&T," Rowley said in a media release on Thursday.
He said the firing of Sautt officers would result in a waste of resources invested in the dismissed officers. "We know of no replacements for their efforts," he added. Rowley said there was a view, locally and abroad, that in dismantling the national security systems and demoralising personnel of these agencies, the Government is trying to have T&T labelled as a narco-state.
"The single question that has to be asked by the people is just who is benefiting from all these deliberate acts aimed at disabling and dismantling our national security systems?" Rowley proceeded to list ten things the Government did during its two and a half years in office to back up his point. They included:
• Firing the highly-trained staff of the Strategic Intelligence?Agency
• Closing down Sautt with a promise to incorporate staff in security services
• Selling the airship (blimp)
• Initiating and abandoning the 21st Century Policing Initiative
• Hiring and firing a foreign commissioner and deputy commissioner of police halfway through their contracts
• Hiring Reshmi Ramnarine, a telephone operator, to head the SIA
• Introducing, passing and proclaiming a law in Parliament to free party financiers of allegations of money laundering