Richard Lord

Cab­i­net yes­ter­day agreed to the re­moval of Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) and im­port du­ties on closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion (CCTV).This was re­vealed by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence. He said it was in keep­ing with a promise made in the 2013 bud­get by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai.Warn­er said the de­ci­sion would be con­firmed next week and amend­ments to the rel­e­vant leg­is­la­tion would be brought to Par­lia­ment for ap­proval.

He said Cari­com would be asked to make the rel­e­vant amend­ments to the sched­ule of ex­empt items in the Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff.Warn­er said the mea­sure would make it eas­i­er for home­own­ers, com­mu­ni­ty and busi­ness se­cu­ri­ty to pur­chase CCTV cam­eras and dig­i­tal video record­ing equip­ment which will be ex­empt from cus­toms du­ties and VAT."Cab­i­net was pre­pared to forego mil­lions of dol­lars to bring these cam­eras on line, and this is an­oth­er thrust in the fight against crime," he said.

He said many CCTV cam­eras in Port-of-Spain, es­pe­cial­ly Beetham Gar­dens, had been dam­aged but new, su­pe­ri­or cam­eras had been in­stalled and "can­not be tak­en so eas­i­ly."

When asked to re­spond to a claim by di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty Gillian Lucky that CCTV cam­eras in Sea Lots were not work­ing at the time of the fa­tal ac­ci­dent near the Cen­tral Mar­ket on the Beetham High­way in Feb­ru­ary, Warn­er said if Lucky had in­for­ma­tion about the mat­ter, "one of the most pru­dent things she should have done was to check with me and see why and if that was so, what steps have been made to cor­rect it."

He said he could not an­swer the ques­tion be­cause he had not heard Lucky's com­ment and she has not asked him about the mat­ter.Warn­er al­so said he was not pre­pared to com­ment on claims by Lucky that the blood test done on the dri­ver of the ve­hi­cle in­volved in the fa­tal ac­ci­dent un­til he got all sides of the mat­ter. He said he was al­so not pre­pared to say the po­lice in­ves­ti­gat­ing the ac­ci­dent were pro­ceed­ing slow­ly.

"I don't see any­body ques­tion how long the Calder Hart in­quiry is tak­ing and he hasn't been charged...I haven't seen any­one ask­ing about Duprey, who hasn't been charged," he added.He said In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion chair­man Ken Gor­don had "lost his guns for months" and no­body has been charged as yet. "I don't think that it is un­usu­al, in those cir­cum­stances, that the in­ves­ti­ga­tions are tak­ing long...It is con­sis­tent with the kinds of things that are hap­pen­ing to­day," he said.

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Warn­er al­so re­vealed dur­ing the news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair that he had "ap­proved" a re­quest for re­porters of the Trinidad Ex­press and CCN TV6 to trav­el to Pana­ma for an up­com­ing Con­ca­caf Con­fer­ence.Warn­er said he got a call yes­ter­day morn­ing about a lo­cal news­pa­per seek­ing ac­cred­i­ta­tion for the con­fer­ence."They called to ask me if I think that is ac­cept­able (and) I say give it to them and give it to Ms (Cami­ni) Mara­jh, give it to Mr (Mark) Bas­sant," Warn­er said.