The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (Do­ma) says it is grate­ful for the joint po­lice/army pa­trols in east Port-of-Spain and Laven­tille for the last ten days be­cause it has brought great re­lief to the res­i­dents.In a news re­lease, the as­so­ci­a­tion said it ap­pre­ci­at­ed the pro­tec­tive agen­cies in­volved in the cur­rent joint pa­trols be­cause sev­er­al lives have been saved.

Do­ma said the ini­tia­tive as "very ef­fec­tive and wor­thy use of the re­sources."It said this ini­tia­tive had been able to make the res­i­dents feel safe again and this was im­por­tant be­cause a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the down­town Port-of-Spain work­force re­sides in east Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons."For the last ten days we have been hear­ing first hand, the ex­pres­sions of re­lief from these per­sons and in par­tic­u­lar, the of­ten re­peat­ed re­mark of 'me and my chil­dren are able to sleep en­tire night,'" the re­lease said.

Do­ma said while oth­ers in so­ci­ety might take a full night's sleep for grant­ed, they can't be­cause this kind of news sat­is­fies their de­sire to pro­vide equal ba­sic con­di­tions for all cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing the fun­da­men­tal need to be able to sleep at night.The as­so­ci­a­tion said it has the ner­vous and sin­cere hope that "we have found a so­lu­tion to this heart-rend­ing and mean­ing­less loss of life, which has been oc­cur­ring for the past ten years."

It said it want­ed to re­mind the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that the thou­sand of lives, which have been lost to mean­ing­less gun bat­tles among the young male cit­i­zens, were all valu­able lives ca­pa­ble of be­ing sal­vaged and wor­thy of pro­tec­tion."We, still in the long shad­ow of the in­spi­ra­tional in­au­gu­ra­tion speech by His Ex­cel­len­cy the Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona, wish to en­cour­age that His Ex­cel­len­cy's words be re­mem­bered and that these lives be con­stant­ly pro­tect­ed by the rep­e­ti­tion of what­ev­er pro­tec­tive strat­e­gy is present­ly be­ing em­ployed."