Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Con­cerns about crime dom­i­nat­ed con­tri­bu­tions from the pub­lic at the UNC’s pre-bud­get con­sul­ta­tion in Ari­ma on Wednes­day.

Re­tired se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent Ken­ny McIn­tyre said T&T was worse off now than in the 1970s and called for sup­port for UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. But for­mer UNC can­di­date Jairz­in­ho Rigs­by said there was an MP be­fore the court who did not have the eth­i­cal be­hav­iour to stand aside and clear his name.

“We have to set an ex­am­ple,” Rigs­by said dur­ing the con­sul­ta­tion. Rigs­by con­test­ed Ari­ma North­east for UNC in the 2023 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions but lost de­spite two re­counts.

The con­sul­ta­tion, held in Ari­ma, was the first of 26 meet­ings.

Pre­sid­ing were MP Khadi­jah Ameen, tem­po­rary UNC sen­a­tor Do­minic Smith and McIn­tyre.

McIn­tyre said he worked dur­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s tenure see­ing “mas­sive trans­for­ma­tion in pos­i­tive di­rec­tions,” but this changed af­ter 2015/16 and to­day T&T is worse off.

Quot­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s view there can be no pros­per­i­ty with­out se­cu­ri­ty, McIn­tyre cit­ed crime sta­tis­tics, eco­nom­ic ef­fects, mi­gra­tion and fear.

“We’re los­ing all sides,” McIn­tyre added, crit­i­cis­ing the brash­ness of cul­prits dis­play­ing guns on so­cial me­dia.

Slam­ming the Gov­ern­ment, McIn­tyre said the three pre­vi­ous PNM prime min­is­ters were PNM, but “This isn’t PNM, it’s some­thing else.

Say­ing the best thing to do was to sup­port the UNC, he said T&T could not af­ford an­oth­er five years like this.

McIn­tyre called on at­ten­dees to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion to give Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s bud­get con­tri­bu­tion “teeth.”

“We have to sup­port each oth­er and sup­port her.”

Rigs­by rec­om­mend­ed bi-par­ti­san pol­i­tics to deal with crime as well as medi­um, short and long-term mea­sures in­volv­ing po­lice pa­trols, so­cial wel­fare pro­grammes and con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form with per­for­mance met­rics for po­lice of­fi­cers and judges.

Rigs­by added, “In all these crime talks no­body’s talk­ing of white col­lar crime and de­bil­i­tat­ing ef­fects of cor­rup­tion. If you feel vi­o­lent crime now is af­fect­ing so­ci­ety, watch to see how cor­rup­tion will take us down a path ... no­body’s speak­ing of white-col­lar crime. In fact, we have a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment be­fore the court and he doesn’t have the eth­i­cal be­hav­iour to stand aside and clear his name—we have to set an ex­am­ple,”

Rigs­by’s rec­om­men­da­tions in­clud­ed urg­ing a UNC Gov­ern­ment to pri­va­tise or sell the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fice build­ing in To­ba­go.

Rigs­by was on UNC Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray’s Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots slate for the UNC’s June in­ter­nal elec­tion. He un­suc­cess­ful­ly con­test­ed the North-East co-or­di­na­tor’s post, get­ting 3,686 votes. At Wednes­day’s con­sul­ta­tion, he was no­ti­fied he had three min­utes of speak­ing time. His face was not shown on trans­mis­sion of the event.

Crys­tal Ho­sein, who said she was an Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry guid­ance of­fi­cer, added she had wit­nessed many of the short­com­ings of the PNM.

She said there was a high cor­re­la­tion be­tween stu­dents with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties who were slow learn­ers falling through the “cracks” in the sys­tem and them be­com­ing in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

She sug­gest­ed hir­ing ad­di­tion­al Spe­cial Ed­u­ca­tion teach­ers and sup­port staff. She said they were lim­it­ed in re­sources.

“We have one Spe­cial Ed teacher for sev­en schools, that’s not enough, chil­dren are be­ing short­changed.”