Michelle Loubon

Laven­tille West MP Nile­ung Hy­po­lite says the dis­band­ing of the Re­peat Of­fend­ers Task Force Pro­gramme has con­tributed to the spi­ralling crime sit­u­a­tion in his con­stituen­cy.He made this com­ment on Fri­day dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the De­fence (Amend­ment) Bill 2013.Hy­po­lite sug­gest­ed the num­ber of po­lice should be in­creased to ef­fec­tive­ly fight crime.

He said: "There has been an in­crease in crime. That is be­cause there is no unit in the ser­vice that would keep in touch with those peo­ple who com­mit crime. The Re­peat Of­fend­ers Pro­gramme was put there to pre­vent re­cidi­vism. They would have been mon­i­tored by the Po­lice Ser­vice and would have worked with ex-pris­on­ers. What you find hap­pen­ing is the same ex-pris­on­ers are com­mit­ting crimes (kid­nap­ping, rapes, mur­ders) they would have done be­fore."

Hy­po­lite felt a prop­er crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tive was to in­crease the num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers. He cit­ed the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan's sta­tis­tics which said there were about 2,000 po­lice on du­ty for any par­tic­u­lar shift and they were adding 600-plus sol­diers.He said: "The num­ber of po­lice should be in­creased. The sol­diers and po­lice are cov­er­ing a cer­tain ge­o­graph­i­cal area. These sol­diers must work to­geth­er with the po­lice. You need an in­creased amount of man­pow­er."

He re­peat­ed the Op­po­si­tion's sen­ti­ments that sol­diers must not be giv­en the same au­thor­i­ty as the po­lice."This con­tributes to a state of mar­tial law," he said."As David Rud­der would say, this is not a fete in here, it is mad­ness," Hy­po­lite said.