Geisha Kow­lessar

While crime was be­ing dis­cussed at yes­ter­day's Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) meet­ing, scores of pro­test­ers gath­ered out­side Par­lia­ment to voice their con­cern over gov­ern­ment's in­ef­fi­cien­cy, in­clud­ing its han­dling of the crime sit­u­a­tion.The San Juan/Laven­tille and Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions ap­peared be­fore the com­mit­tee, head­ed by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Sub­has Ramkhelawan.

The San Juan/Laven­tille cor­po­ra­tion, which ap­peared first was rep­re­sent­ed by its var­i­ous mem­bers, in­clud­ing CEO Ken­wyn Pan­tin, chair­man An­tho­ny Roberts and prin­ci­pal med­ical and health of­fi­cer Dr Raphael How Chung.The cor­po­ra­tion's mu­nic­i­pal po­lice in­spec­tor Wen­dell Guz­man said what was ur­gent­ly need­ed was bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween mu­nic­i­pal of­fi­cers and the Po­lice Ser­vice.

He said the present strength was 24 of­fi­cers of var­i­ous ranks. The con­sta­bles, Guz­man said, were Spe­cial Re­serve of­fi­cers who could leave at any time.He iden­ti­fied the area sur­round­ing the Croisee as be­ing known for "pip­ing," The high crime rate has al­so af­fect­ed work be­ing done at the cor­po­ra­tion in­clud­ing the de­liv­ery of ser­vices, the com­mit­tee heard.

"Def­i­nite­ly there is a prob­lem in re­la­tion to the de­liv­ery of ser­vices in ar­eas such as Laven­tille. Of­ten times, you have to pro­vide po­lice es­cort to get the dai­ly chores done and this takes away from dai­ly pa­trols."An­oth­er prob­lem we are hav­ing is wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the cen­tral po­lice ...in case of emer­gency we don't have any wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the cen­tral po­lice, so things may be hap­pen­ing or hap­pen­ing around us and we are not aware," Guz­man said.

He said po­lice were equipped with mod­ern weapons, as op­posed to mu­nic­i­pal of­fi­cers who had to work with pis­tols and shot­guns.To com­pound mat­ters im­mi­grants par­tic­u­lar­i­ly from Ja­maica and Guyana were al­so adding to the crime sit­u­a­tion."Just re­cent­ly we ar­rest­ed six il­le­gal im­mi­grants in a house in San Juan where il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties were tak­ing place," Guz­man said.Judy Thomp­son, who is the in­spec­tor as­signed to the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, echoed sim­i­lar con­cerns.

"To start with, Tu­na­puna it­self is a hotspot. We have the hous­ing com­mu­ni­ties like Mal­abar, La Hor­quet­ta, and some of these ar­eas north of Tu­na­puna and in Arou­ca al­so are hotspots," Thomp­son added.She said when prob­lems were en­coun­tered help was of­ten re­quired from the Po­lice Ser­vice.Say­ing there was a short­age of mu­nic­i­pal of­fi­cers, Thomp­son said the sanc­tioned strength of 14 of­fi­cers was nev­er grant­ed and to cov­er all the ar­eas there was a need for 48.

"I came in 2010, where I met on­ly sev­en of­fi­cers. Right now we have four of­fi­cers, one preg­nant per­son, no dri­ver, the in­spec­tor, the sergeant and two cor­po­rals. "I try, with the lit­tle staff I have, to ac­com­pa­ny the health in­spec­tors, to ac­com­pa­ny the lit­ter war­dens," Thomp­son said.She said there was a re­cruit­ment process tak­ing place but was un­sure where that process had reached.

When the build­ing in­spec­tor had to serve no­tices, Thomp­son said, she would get a cor­po­ra­tion dri­ver to ac­com­pa­ny him but this arrange­ment was not safe.On the is­sue of vend­ing, Thomp­son said this was be­com­ing a sore point, es­pe­cial­ly along the high­ways.