Lament­ing the coun­try’s crime rate and the dele­te­ri­ous im­pact it is hav­ing on T&T’s busi­ness sec­tor, Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray has added his voice to those call­ing for re­newed crime-fight­ing strate­gies.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, he urged oth­er sec­tors to join the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce and the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AM­CHAM T&T) in speak­ing out against the crime sit­u­a­tion.

He said crime was hurt­ing busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties and the bloody vi­o­lence be­ing wit­nessed had caused mer­chants to make cost­ly in­vest­ments in mod­ern se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems while oth­ers have had to re­duce their op­er­at­ing hours.

The Op­po­si­tion MP claimed there were in­stances where busi­ness op­er­a­tors were even forced out of busi­ness, lead­ing to the loss of jobs.

He added that in oth­er in­stances, some busi­ness­es have had to in­vest in Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­grammes (EAP) for work­ers who were trau­ma­tised af­ter wit­ness­ing crimes or who feel en­dan­gered dur­ing their du­ties.

CoP: TTPS do­ing its best

Mean­while, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is re­as­sur­ing cit­i­zens that de­spite mis­lead­ing me­dia re­ports pro­claim­ing crime is out of con­trol, he is work­ing tire­less­ly and re­lent­less­ly to do all that can be done to re­duce crime.

He said it was dif­fi­cult for the TTPS to ap­pre­hend crim­i­nals who are re­leased the fol­low­ing day.

Grif­fith said de­spite the un­ac­cept­able lev­el of mur­ders which present­ly equates with the same pe­ri­od last year, se­ri­ous and vi­o­lent crime over­all has dropped in com­par­i­son to the pre­vi­ous years.

Grif­fith claimed that since he as­sumed of­fice, there has been a mod­erni­sa­tion and trans­for­ma­tion of the TTPS and he is as­sur­ing cit­i­zens that the men and women of the TTPS will be in con­trol of the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

He said, “The TTPS has good lead­ers and of­fi­cers who are pre­pared to die for their coun­try, so by try­ing to make the TTPS the fall guy, when these of­fi­cers go out dai­ly will­ing to put their lives on the line for their coun­try, is very un­for­tu­nate.”

He claimed the homi­cide rate would have been much high­er, were it not for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of hun­dreds of ma­jor poli­cies and ini­tia­tives by the TTPS.

He ad­vised, “To those who con­tin­ue to crit­i­cise, they may be un­aware that the TTPS has been play­ing our part and do­ing all that we can pos­si­bly do, but it stops at the ar­rest and charges be­ing laid.”