The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has wel­comed the end of the state of emer­gency but ex­pressed con­cerns about the way some of the mea­sures were im­ple­ment­ed. In a state­ment yes­ter­day, just hours af­ter the of­fi­cial end of the state of emer­gency, the Cham­ber said that while it recog­nised that there were some achieve­ments in the fight against crime, which in­clud­ed drug hauls and no­table re­duc­tion in gang war­fare, the cham­ber ex­pressed its dis­ap­point­ment and dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the util­i­sa­tion of the An­ti-Gang Leg­is­la­tion dur­ing the months of the state of emer­gency.

In the re­lease, the cham­ber said it was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ap­point­ed since all per­sons de­tained un­der this piece of leg­is­la­tion were sub­se­quent­ly re­leased due to in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence-or none at all-with some now tak­ing le­gal ac­tion against the State for wrong­ful de­ten­tion. The cham­ber said when the state of emer­gency was first im­ple­ment­ed on Au­gust 22, the pri­vate sec­tor was in full sup­port of it, as it sig­nalled a de­ter­mi­na­tion by the Gov­ern­ment to reign in on spi­ralling crime. "We main­tained our sup­port, de­spite loss­es in­curred by sev­er­al sec­tors of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, es­pe­cial­ly while the cur­few hours were in ef­fect," it said.

"The con­stant polic­ing and re­lent­less en­force­ment of all na­tion's laws, which was ev­i­dent dur­ing the state of emer­gency, must be main­tained that we do not lose ground that was al­ready won." Mean­while, the cham­ber said it hoped the Gov­ern­ment and the se­cu­ri­ty forces would utilise lessons learnt from the past three months and would re­vis­it and im­ple­ment more ef­fec­tive le­gal and se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures to curb crime. With sev­er­al new pro­pos­als put for­ward by the Gov­ern­ment to help re­duce crime, the cham­ber said it was look­ing for­ward to hear­ing a com­pre­hen­sive na­tion­al crime plan to sus­tain the cur­rent low lev­els of se­ri­ous crimes.