JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has de­scribed the 2027 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion as a “peo­ple-cen­tred and ex­cel­lent bud­get.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said the al­lo­ca­tion giv­en to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty will lead to a safer coun­try.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo al­lo­cat­ed $7.321 bil­lion for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, which would cov­er the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, the De­fence Min­istry and Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

“It’s an ex­cel­lent bud­get. It’s a peo­ple-cen­tred bud­get. You know what we re­alised hap­pened over the years is this: the time that we are here, it’s about the man­i­festo that we pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic. So, at the end of the day, it is what it is.”

With ap­prox­i­mate­ly 700 new po­lice of­fi­cers to be added to the TTPS, the re­fur­bish­ment of four po­lice sta­tions, 67 new SU­Vs, three com­mis­sioned mi­cro po­lice units and the promise of three more soon, Alexan­der was asked if the al­lo­ca­tion was enough to cov­er re­cur­rent ex­pens­es.

In re­sponse, he said: “Every­thing will be al­right in a minute. I think we’re look­ing for­ward to great things. And as the Prime Min­is­ter said to­day, and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, it’s not yet over. So, we con­tin­ue to see where this is go­ing and present new things.”

Tan­coo said the Gov­ern­ment is evolv­ing its ap­proach to polic­ing through an in­te­grat­ed dig­i­tal plat­form and the ex­pand­ed use of fa­cial recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy, au­to­mat­ic li­cence plate recog­ni­tion, geo-fenc­ing, sur­veil­lance sys­tems and oth­er in­tel­li­gence ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

“These tools will en­hance our pro­tec­tive ser­vices’ abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy crime hotspots, con­nect in­for­ma­tion across in­ves­ti­ga­tions, track sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty and de­ploy re­sources where they are most need­ed,” Tan­coo said.

He added that there will be a strength­en­ing of the coun­try’s bor­ders by en­hanc­ing mar­itime sur­veil­lance, in­tel­li­gence shar­ing and op­er­a­tional co­or­di­na­tion.

The State will al­so in­ten­si­fy the op­er­a­tional readi­ness of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force through fur­ther in­vest­ment in Coast Guard ves­sels, mar­itime as­sets, sur­veil­lance, naval in­fra­struc­ture and lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port.

Alexan­der said all of this will make the coun­try safer, adding: “For me, it’s about sav­ing lives and com­mu­ni­ties and we’re not do­ing so bad now, so we con­tin­ue to do that. Let the bud­get come and pass and all of that and then we’ll be al­right.”

In his bud­get ad­dress, Tan­coo al­lo­cat­ed $281.8 mil­lion to the De­fence Force to set­tle ar­rears while $29.9 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to the Gold­en Grove Prison Perime­ter Se­cu­ri­ty Up­grade Project, which will be part of Gov­ern­ment’s plan to strength­en se­cu­ri­ty, in­mate trans­porta­tion and emer­gency re­sponse ca­pac­i­ty.

He added that by the end of the year, close to 496 new prison of­fi­cers will be trained.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ger­ard Gor­don said he did not hear of any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly new for the prison ser­vice.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Gor­don said, “We saw no oth­er ma­jor an­nounce­ment. We await to see the ex­act doc­u­ments, what have been al­lo­cat­ed to the prison ser­vices for fis­cal 2026/2027. We hope that some­thing sub­stan­tial would have been placed there, es­pe­cial­ly in the realm of in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment, uni­forms and state the long-out­stand­ing over­time for of­fi­cers.”