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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Rowley on escalating murder rate: Unacceptable

by

20160226

Ur­gent ac­tion is be­ing tak­en to deal with the un­ac­cept­able mur­der rate in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day.

Row­ley, who is al­so the chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, made the com­ment as he re­spond­ed to ques­tions put to him by Na­pari­ma MP and for­mer Am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed Na­tions Rod­ney Charles in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day.

Charles had asked Row­ley if, giv­en the high mur­der rate for the year-to-date in the coun­try, he was sat­is­fied with his gov­ern­ment's plans to re­duce the mur­der rate.

Row­ley got up and said: "The an­swer is yes."

He then took his seat.

The Op­po­si­tion MP then asked Row­ley if he agreed that the coun­try was like­ly to have its high­est an­nu­al mur­der rate this year and that there was need for ur­gent ac­tion to pre­vent that from be­com­ing re­al­i­ty.

Row­ley said: "The an­swer is that the tra­jec­to­ry is un­ac­cept­able and ur­gent ac­tion is be­ing tak­en."

He did not elab­o­rate fur­ther.

There have been some 79 mur­ders with­in the first 57 days of this year, among them 30-year-old Japan­ese pan­nist Asa­mi Na­gakiya, whose body was found un­der a tree in the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, on Ash Wednes­day, and four teenage school­boys–Denel­son Smith, 17, and Mark Richards, 16, in Laven­tille (Jan­u­ary 21), and Stephan Singh and Daniel Halls, both 16, in St Au­gus­tine on Tues­day of this week.

Days af­ter the killings of Smith and Richards, Row­ley said joint army/po­lice pa­trols would in­ten­si­fy in crime hotspots and re­main in ef­fect for as long as deemed nec­es­sary by the au­thor­i­ties. But the mur­ders con­tin­ue in Laven­tille and across the coun­try.

Row­ley ar­rived in the Par­lia­ment more than two-and-a-half hours af­ter the sched­uled 1.30 pm start of the sit­ting yes­ter­day, af­ter at­tend­ing the fu­ner­al of a PNM stal­wart in San Fer­nan­do. (See page A6) The ques­tions to the PM were there­fore de­ferred to short­ly be­fore the 4.30 pm tea break when he ar­rived in the Cham­ber.

Re­spond­ing to an­oth­er ques­tion on the Cou­va Chil­dren's and Adult Hos­pi­tal which was opened by the for­mer gov­ern­ment days be­fore the Sep­tem­ber 7 gen­er­al elec­tion last year, Row­ley said the project was still un­der con­struc­tion and was sched­uled for com­ple­tion at the end of March.

He said con­se­quent­ly the de­fects li­a­bil­i­ties pro­vi­sion will take ef­fect from April this year.

He said pend­ing the com­ple­tion of the hos­pi­tal, Ude­cott would con­tin­ue to pro­vide over­sight and have any de­fects iden­ti­fied and ad­dressed by the con­trac­tor. Ude­cott will al­so en­sure that the se­cu­ri­ty of the fa­cil­i­ties and equip­ment at the hos­pi­tal was main­tained, he added.

He said, how­ev­er, that if the Gov­ern­ment was un­able to se­cure the equip­ment for the in­sti­tu­tion the for­mer gov­ern­ment would be held per­son­al­ly re­spon­si­ble for putting it there while the hos­pi­tal was still un­der con­struc­tion.

Row­ley added that the is­sue of pro­vid­ing staff to op­er­ate the hos­pi­tal when com­plet­ed re­mains a ma­jor is­sue.

"Where will the staff come from?" he asked, adding that it was not his gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to take staff from oth­er hos­pi­tals with the risk of com­pro­mis­ing the ser­vices at those fa­cil­i­ties.

He said con­sid­er­a­tion was al­so be­ing giv­en to have the fa­cil­i­ty at Cou­va op­er­ate un­der a pub­lic/pri­vate sec­tor part­ner­ship.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so up­dat­ed leg­is­la­tors on the num­ber of peo­ple who have ben­e­fit­ed from the Chil­dren's Life Fund since Sep­tem­ber to date.

The fund was es­tab­lished by the for­mer Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment to as­sist chil­dren in need of life-sav­ing op­er­a­tions abroad. Row­ley said since Sep­tem­ber 2015 to present, sev­en chil­dren were as­sist­ed at a cost of over $2 mil­lion. He said for the same pe­ri­od, 16 ap­pli­cants were ap­proved at a cost of over $4 mil­lion. He said for Feb­ru­ary 2016, six ap­pli­ca­tions were re­ceived.

He said since the PNM as­sumed of­fice last Sep­tem­ber "we have re­ceived no com­plaint of mon­ey be­ing stolen from the fund."

The Prime Min­is­ter said the CSO had al­so in­formed the Gov­ern­ment that the un­em­ploy­ment rate for the third quar­ter of last year was 3.4 per cent, in re­sponse to a ques­tion from Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath.


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