Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day a re­cent What­sApp video de­pict­ing crim­i­nal gang mem­bers dis­play­ing so­phis­ti­cat­ed guns at var­i­ous lo­ca­tions in T&T will be ad­dressed by the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) on Tues­day.

Row­ley made the com­ment dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, as he ad­mit­ted to not hav­ing seen the video yet.

Asked about the preva­lence of high-pow­ered guns en­ter­ing the coun­try un­de­tect­ed and our porous bor­ders, Row­ley said peo­ple were still try­ing and some­times suc­ceed­ing in pen­e­trat­ing our coastal bor­ders.

"We know that is the prob­lem. We know we have mar­itime bor­ders and have to make them as se­cure as pos­si­ble. Don't for­get there is a mar­ket in Trinidad and To­ba­go for arms and am­mu­ni­tion," the PM said.

But Row­ley said some peo­ple in the coun­try went af­ter the arms and am­mu­ni­tion to con­duct their dai­ly af­fairs.

"There are peo­ple out­side of our coun­try who are hell bent on sup­ply­ing that mar­ket. So whether we put in place... whether the Coast Guard, fence, a post, what­ev­er... we al­ways have to aim to be ac­cu­rate 100 per cent of the time, oth­er­wise some per­sons are go­ing to get in with arms and am­mu­ni­tion in­to our coun­try. And we have been see­ing with­in re­cent times... not just arms, but a high­er qual­i­ty of am­mu­ni­tion."

The PM said they were not sat­is­fied with the sit­u­a­tion but were work­ing on the is­sue.

Row­ley al­so dis­closed that the face recog­ni­tion sys­tem at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port had been sab­o­taged. He said be­cause the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil had been func­tion­ing ef­fec­tive­ly they were able to pick up on and rec­ti­fy "where we have dis­cov­ered for many months... or God knows for how long be­fore we came in­to of­fice that the face recog­ni­tion sys­tem at Pi­ar­co Air­port had been de­lib­er­ate­ly sab­o­taged."

As a re­sult, Row­ley said pas­sen­gers en­ter­ing and leav­ing the air­port, in­clud­ing law-abid­ing and crim­i­nals, could not have been iden­ti­fied.

He re­fused to elab­o­rate on the mat­ter but when ques­tioned if any­one had been held or ar­rest­ed he said he did not know.

"There are cer­tain things that for our own... some­thing... some­times are bet­ter left un­said for a while."