Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has called on the gov­ern­ment to be more trans­par­ent in its han­dling of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

In a me­dia re­lease, she said, “The Gov­ern­ment’s flip flop on the move to hire pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms to com­ple­ment po­lice pa­trols dur­ing the na­tion­al shut­down caused by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic high­lights the need for greater trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in all Gov­ern­ment’s spend­ing on mea­sures aimed at mit­i­gat­ing COVID-19.”

She added that in less than 24 hours of the de­ci­sion be­ing made pub­lic, the Gov­ern­ment was forced to re­scind it. She said this hap­pened fol­low­ing wide­spread crit­i­cism and con­cerns over what she called, the lack of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty over the use of tax­pay­ers’ monies from the Her­itage and Sta­bi­liza­tion Fund, the role of the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force and Po­lice— in par­tic­u­lar, the un­der-use of the for­mer— in pro­vid­ing se­cu­ri­ty for cit­i­zens at this time, the le­gal im­pli­ca­tions/ju­ris­dic­tion of the ini­tia­tive which could re­sult in abuse of pow­er against cit­i­zens and the ap­par­ent on­go­ing lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion among key na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies, in light of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er’s state­ment that the TTPS did not make such a re­quest of Gov­ern­ment.

She again ques­tioned the use of HSF funds for such ini­tia­tives, in­stead of be­ing used to pro­vide in­creased fi­nan­cial and so­cial sup­port for cit­i­zens and small busi­ness dur­ing this time of un­ex­pect­ed mass un­em­ploy­ment and loss of in­come.

The Op­po­si­tion leader said, “the ex­pla­na­tion giv­en by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young that cit­i­zens feel safe and there is no need for ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty does not hold any weight and it is clear that no one be­lieves that this is the rea­son for the about-turn.”

She said the Gov­ern­ment must be trans­par­ent and ac­count­able to the cit­i­zens, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty de­ci­sions and state spend­ing.

She said, “is­sues of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty should nev­er be so ad hoc that you could re­scind a de­ci­sion overnight."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar went on to rec­om­mend that the Cab­i­net adopts a pol­i­cy of clear­ly in­form­ing cit­i­zens at its dai­ly news con­fer­ence on all its de­ci­sions re­lat­ing to the spend­ing of the $10 bil­lion ac­cessed from the HSF fund and the $10 bil­lion in bor­row­ings un­der the De­vel­op­ment Loans Act, use the var­i­ous tech­no­log­i­cal plat­forms to con­sult with all rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers re­gard­ing any pro­posed emer­gency mea­sures it in­tends to take, to get nec­es­sary feed­back and con­sen­sus, uti­lizes the monies ac­cessed from the HSF to fo­cus on pro­vid­ing much need­ed so­cial, med­ical and fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to the very large seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion which now faces un­em­ploy­ment and loss of in­come as a re­sult of the cur­rent cri­sis, and un­der­takes to, as best as pos­si­ble, re­move the bu­reau­cra­cy in the re­lief grant process, which is cur­rent­ly pre­vent­ing many cit­i­zens from ac­cess­ing the pro­gramme.