Gail Alexan­der

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour has giv­en his com­mit­ment to work “shoul­der to shoul­der” with Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard on ad­dress­ing is­sues at the DPP’s of­fice.

And Cab­i­net last week passed reg­u­la­tions to per­mit the scrap met­al in­dus­try to re­sume, in­clud­ing with in­spec­tors for the sec­tor.

Ar­mour con­firmed these po­si­tions on TTT’s Delv­ing Deep­er pro­gramme on Sun­day.

An im­broglio arose in March af­ter DPP Gas­pard spoke of chron­ic staffing short­ages with­in his Of­fice. This trig­gered con­tro­ver­sial com­ments from the Prime Min­is­ter, AG and Chief Jus­tice.

But at a Par­lia­men­tary Com­mit­tee meet­ing last month, Gas­pard stood his ground on con­cerns about the is­sues that re­quire at­ten­tion be­yond what his di­vi­sion can rec­ti­fy.

On Sun­day, Ar­mour, un­der whose min­istry the ODDP falls, said, “Yes, we ac­knowl­edge there are chal­lenges in the DPP’s De­part­ment. I cer­tain­ly ac­knowl­edge there are staff short­ages and al­so that the ma­jor­i­ty—if not all the at­tor­neys—are rel­a­tive­ly young. The most se­nior mem­bers of the DPP’s de­part­ment had moved on in their ca­reers, so there’s no ques­tion there are staff short­ages.

“The DPP and I have been hav­ing very mean­ing­ful, very ma­ture con­ver­sa­tions. Those are on­go­ing and I’ve made a very firm com­mit­ment to the Di­rec­tor that we’ll work with him shoul­der to shoul­der to ad­dress the prob­lems he has, to en­sure he has an im­proved and ef­fi­cient DPP’s Of­fice and that’s an on­go­ing process.”

Ar­mour said he’s a so­lu­tion-ori­ent­ed per­son and, “… I’m there­fore com­mit­ted to work­ing with the DPP. I ac­knowl­edge his prob­lems, I’m not deny­ing he has chal­lenges and I’ve in­vit­ed him - and I’m hap­py to say he’s ac­cept­ed the chal­lenge to work with me - to­wards re­solv­ing his prob­lems. Out of that, I ex­pect very pos­i­tive out­comes.”

On the scrap met­al in­dus­try, the T&T Scrap Iron Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion last month cit­ed a lack of nec­es­sary sup­port to ful­ly re­open and was await­ing the scrap met­al in­spec­tors and oth­er sys­tems to be ad­min­is­tered by the Trade Min­istry.

SI­DA al­so cit­ed “teething prob­lems” as the first set of new reg­u­la­tions which ap­ply to scrap yards are op­er­a­tionalised. TTSI­DA head Al­lan Fer­gu­son in­di­cat­ed reg­u­la­tions for col­lec­tors were still await­ed.

Ad­dress­ing this on the pro­gramme, Ar­mour said, “We’ve brought the Scrap Met­al Act in­to ef­fect and last Thurs­day al­so, we passed the reg­u­la­tions that are go­ing to per­mit the in­dus­try to re­sume and we al­so gave ef­fect in Cab­i­net to the Scrap Met­al In­spec­tors’ Reg­u­la­tions. That’s go­ing to al­low the Trade Min­istry to put the in­spec­tors out there to in­spect what’s go­ing on; so that what we were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing be­fore—il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties strip­ping away of cop­per and oth­er met­al net­works—aren’t be­ing stripped again.”

On an­oth­er mat­ter, Ar­mour al­so said the repa­tri­a­tion of T&T na­tion­als in Mid­dle East refugee camps is a com­plex sit­u­a­tion. These per­sons are sur­vivors of na­tion­als who joined the Is­lam­ic State ter­ror­ist group over 2012-2015. Ar­mour said the Nizam Mo­hammed team which Gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed to li­aise with fam­i­lies will diplo­mat­i­cal­ly sup­port the For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry to speak with the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and the coun­tries.

“… They need to speak with, to put things in place to bring peo­ple back and al­so mak­ing sure with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istries, as health, ed­u­ca­tion and their psy­cho-so­cial health is go­ing to be im­por­tant,” he said.

“There’s very se­ri­ous work in progress at the mo­ment that’s head­ed by for­mer House Speak­er Mo­hammed. I’m ex­pect­ing we’ll be­gin to see the re­sults of the work he’s done with­in a rea­son­able pe­ri­od of time.”