Yvonne Ba­boolal

Res­i­dents and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty of Cou­va are reel­ing from a spate of rob­beries over the re­cent Christ­mas sea­son and are wel­com­ing the new year with fear and un­cer­tain­ty.

Over the past few months an in­creas­ing num­ber of ban­dits have been bold­ly roam­ing the South­ern Main Road in Cou­va in day­light, rob­bing cus­tomers and busi­ness places and, in many in­stances, leav­ing peo­ple in­jured and trau­ma­tised. Pres­i­dent of the Cou­va/Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce, Ash­meer Mo­hamed, re­lat­ed to the Sun­day Guardian some of the at­tacks on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Hys­ter­i­cal, faint­ing

He said on De­cem­ber 22, an armed rob­bery at Vic­to­ria Lab­o­ra­to­ries on the South­ern Main Road re­sult­ed in the hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion of a preg­nant 18-year-old em­ploy­ee. The work­er was alone when the men en­tered and de­mand­ed she hand over the mon­ey.

A hair­dress­er near the lab told the Sun­day Guardian when the ban­dits left, the work­er rushed across to tell them what hap­pened. "She was hys­ter­i­cal and kept faint­ing. She end­ed up at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal where she was treat­ed and lat­er dis­charged." Mo­hamed said on a Sun­day ear­ly in De­cem­ber, around 11.30 am, ban­dits stormed in­to V&S Su­per­mar­ket and robbed them. In late Oc­to­ber Ab­dool's Su­per­mar­ket was robbed and the own­er, Zo­ri­na Ab­dool, was tied up and locked in the store­room.

Cus­tomers en­ter­ing and leav­ing Sco­tia­bank on the South­ern Main Road are fre­quent­ly robbed of their cash and ques­tion­able char­ac­ters are of­ten seen lurk­ing out­side the build­ing. Three weeks ago, a mar­ket ven­dor was robbed ear­ly in the morn­ing as she came out of the bank, Mo­hamed said. "A mem­ber of the Cham­ber went to make a de­posit re­cent­ly and his cash was seized from him." Mo­hamed said the Cham­ber al­so was in­un­dat­ed with re­ports of mem­bers' ve­hi­cles be­ing stolen.

"An in­cred­i­ble amount of cars are be­ing stolen in the Cou­va area."

He said, as a re­sult, "quite a few busi­ness peo­ple" had mi­grat­ed and were op­er­at­ing their busi­ness­es from abroad. Mo­hamed said last year the Cham­ber re­quest­ed joint po­lice/ army pa­trols for Cou­va, but it nev­er ma­te­ri­alised. He said the Cou­va po­lice did some foot pa­trols but were kept busy with traf­fic prob­lems, an­oth­er ma­jor headache in the area. "Cou­va is not get­ting the kind of se­cu­ri­ty that makes us feel con­fi­dent," Mo­hamed said.

"As the po­lice are putting more re­sources in hot spots, ban­dits are com­ing to Cen­tral. But Cou­va and Ch­agua­nas are now crime hot spots." Mo­hamed said the cham­ber was still await­ing a re­sponse from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry about a crime plan pre­sent­ed to it. Cou­va South MP Kelvin Ram­nath said his of­fice had re­ceived sev­er­al re­ports of crim­i­nal at­tacks in the McBean area.

He said Dr Ram­per­sad Paras­ram, a McBean res­i­dent, had his house bro­ken in­to.

"They used a crow­bar to prise out the bur­glar proof­ing," Ram­nath told the Sun­day Guardian last Mon­day.

The MP said a sus­pect from a re­cent Pe­nal shoot­ing in­ci­dent was held for one of the Cou­va rob­beries, but not­ed that a lot of the crimes are em­a­nat­ing from pock­ets of ar­eas with­in the com­mu­ni­ty. "There's the Cou­va hous­ing scheme, the Rail­way Road area and Hell Town in McBean.

Await­ing re­sponse

Ram­nath said the area had seen a re­duc­tion in crime when ASP Ram­dath was in charge of the Cou­va sta­tion. Ram­dath was re­cent­ly trans­ferred to the Port-of-Spain di­vi­sion and the move has prompt­ed the pen­ning of a let­ter of com­plaint from Ram­nath to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph. "Over 500 peo­ple were ar­rest­ed in Cou­va for var­i­ous crimes dur­ing the five months that Ram­dath was here," Ram­nath said. The MP said Ram­dath was "un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly" moved out af­ter he made a state­ment about in­dis­ci­pline in the po­lice ser­vice. "He made the state­ment af­ter he was asked about po­lice cars be­ing parked out­side rumshops," Ram­nath said.

Ram­nath, in his De­cem­ber 23, 2008, let­ter to Joseph, ac­cused him of dis­cour­tesy. "I tried com­mu­ni­cat­ing with your self and was put on hold by your sec­re­tary who in­di­cat­ed that you will re­spond to my call, to which you nev­er did to this date. "I wish to re­mind you that I am an elect­ed Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment and your dis­cour­tesy is un­be­com­ing of the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty," the let­ter stat­ed.