Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds says he was told Is­raeli-made bul­lets were found on Nel­son Street, Port-of-Spain, af­ter a shoot­ing in­ci­dent on Mon­day.Con­tribut­ing to yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate on a bill to amend the Ex­che­quer Act, Hinds said the Gov­ern­ment had failed to deal ef­fec­tive­ly with the crime prob­lem as there have been 62 mur­ders in some 50 days.He told leg­is­la­tors af­ter a shoot­ing in­ci­dent on Nel­son Street an un­named friend told him the rounds of am­mu­ni­tion had in­scribed on their base "IMI."

Hinds said "IMI" meant "Is­rael Mil­i­tary In­dus­try" and the T&T mil­i­tary pur­chased that type of am­mu­ni­tion. He quick­ly said he did not know the source of those spent shells.Sen­ate Leader, En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources Min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh, shout­ed: "Tam­per­ing with a crime scene," but Hinds dis­missed that claim.He said the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty got more funds than it had re­quest­ed in the last bud­get and he ques­tioned whether the coun­try was get­ting val­ue for mon­ey be­cause the crime rate con­tin­ued to es­ca­late.

Hinds and Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi both raised the con­tro­ver­sy over the re­port­ed re­vival of the Fly­ing Squad in the Po­lice Ser­vice. They were crit­i­cal of the move and in­sist­edthe Gov­ern­ment must pro­vide an­swers.Ear­li­er, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Sub­has Ramkhelawan said the Gov­ern­ment should re­view the leg­is­la­tion be­fore seek­ing to ap­prove it and it should be amend­ed to make it com­pul­so­ry for lim­its to be placed on cred­it cards for elec­tron­ic trans­fer.

"We can­not have a sit­u­a­tion where you give per­sons cred­it cards, bank cards and give au­thor­i­ty for elec­tron­ic trans­fer with­out hav­ing clear and dis­cern­able lim­its," he added.Ramkhelawan and Hinds con­grat­u­lat­ed Pres­i­dent-elect An­tho­ny Car­mona who will be­come the fifth T&T Pres­i­dent on March 18.

Ramkhelawan al­so said he would speak to the me­dia about his po­si­tion on calls for in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors to re­sign when a new Pres­i­dent is to as­sume of­fice.He said it was the cus­tom and prac­tice for in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors to serve for the full five-year term of Par­lia­ment but that pe­ri­od could be al­tered if the Pres­i­dent had cause to ter­mi­nate the ap­point­ment be­fore the full term was com­plet­ed.