SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

In its ninth year in pow­er, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) faces high stakes in an elec­tion year, as the coun­try grap­ples with crime.

“We as a gov­ern­ment need to move quick­ly. We are putting the re­sources be­hind there,” said the chair­man of the par­ty, Stu­art Young, SC, in an in­ter­view at Bal­isi­er House last Fri­day.

Since tak­ing of­fice in 2015, Young ac­knowl­edged that the biggest prob­lem they have on their hands is the ris­ing mur­ders and crime rates, which is of great con­cern to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“We are cer­tain­ly not bury­ing our heads in the sand be­cause crime af­fects every sin­gle cit­i­zen,” the for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter said.

“I hear peo­ple say­ing about crime not af­fect­ing the Prime Min­is­ter and not af­fect­ing min­is­ters and stuff. That is com­plete rub­bish. It is one of the things that will give us sleep­less nights. It is some­thing that we have a lot of con­cern over.”

As a mem­ber of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, Young said they would not throw their hands in the air “and say this is an un­govern­able sit­u­a­tion.”

He said the in­creased ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of as­sault ri­fles and am­mu­ni­tion by crim­i­nals has been push­ing the mur­der and crime fig­ures up­wards, which is a sit­u­a­tion the en­tire re­gion is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing.

But he is op­ti­mistic that Kei­th Scot­land, SC, who was re­cent­ly ap­point­ed as Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty with a man­date to fo­cus on the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), would make a dif­fer­ence. But he said swift ac­tion was need­ed.

He said the pub­lic al­so has to part­ner with the Gov­ern­ment to fight crime, while the T&T De­fence Force and Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) have to work along­side the TTPS.

Young said the Gov­ern­ment has spent bil­lions of dol­lars in re­sources be­hind the TTPS, which is charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of deal­ing with crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty.

But in this or­gan­i­sa­tion, there are few bad eggs.

“Peo­ple have spo­ken about it. There are un­for­tu­nate­ly cor­rupt el­e­ments and some­what cor­rupt el­e­ments—a small hand­ful—that are in every el­e­ment of our so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice. We need to iden­ti­fy them.”

He ob­served that the man­age­ment of the TTPS is han­dled by the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, which sends the mer­it list to the Par­lia­ment.

“We have our hands tied by what­ev­er comes be­fore us as the choic­es,” he said, re­fer­ring to the names on the mer­it list.

The Gov­ern­ment, he said, of­fers sup­port “to who­ev­er is there.”

“I wish we had a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty that can change that whole set-up and that whole process to make it more ac­count­able, or maybe more ac­count­able to the whole Par­lia­ment in some way and in some form.”

Young said he would love to see this whole process change as “the on­ly way we can move for­ward in the man­age­ment of the pub­lic ser­vice sys­tem in T&T.”

But the ju­di­cia­ry al­so has a role to play.

“You are find­ing, for ex­am­ple, re­peat of­fend­ers with firearms

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get­ting a rep­ri­mand and a dis­charge when we, the leg­is­la­tors, have changed the law ... that if you are a re­peat of­fend­er with an il­le­gal firearm for the third time, you can ac­tu­al­ly get life im­pris­on­ment.”

Young said they have not been see­ing the courts im­ple­ment such sen­tenc­ing and send a strong mes­sage to the crim­i­nals that there are con­se­quences.

He said the Wa­ter­front Build­ing and Hall of Jus­tice were pro­vid­ed to the ju­di­cia­ry for civ­il and crim­i­nal mat­ters.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so amend­ed the law for pre­lim­i­nary in­quiries.

Sta­ble econ­o­my

Asked what grade he would give the Gov­ern­ment, Young said, “I think the PNM has got­ten a very good grade, cer­tain­ly in the last nine years.”

In the dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances they op­er­at­ed in, Young said, “I can say as a se­nior mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ment, as the chair­man of the par­ty, I would give us an A grade.”

He al­so gave Row­ley an “A grade” for pro­vid­ing the best for the coun­try and pop­u­la­tion.

For con­text, Young de­scribed the coun­try in 2015 as “an un­sta­ble state”—the price of oil had fall­en to US$20 a bar­rel in 2016, gas and oil pro­duc­tion al­so dropped, and in 2020, the coun­try was crip­pled by COVID-19.

“These things have se­ri­ous ef­fects on rev­enue,” he added.

But while bat­tling is­sues, Young not­ed the Gov­ern­ment was able to main­tain “all the so­cial and ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes, health care sys­tem, pay pub­lic ser­vants salaries, and keep an econ­o­my go­ing,” which he be­lieves is the Gov­ern­ment’s first ma­jor achieve­ment.

Over­all, he said, the PNM must be cred­it­ed for sta­bil­is­ing the coun­try dur­ing its dark­est hour.

Asked if crime might be one of the fac­tors that might turn peo­ple from vot­ing for the PNM in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion, Young said, “Crime is some­thing that will be at the fore­front of most of the cit­i­zens’ minds. There is no doubt about that. But when you are look­ing at it, you need to look at it ob­jec­tive­ly. You need to look at what is hap­pen­ing in oth­er ar­eas near­by to us ... in oth­er Cari­com re­gions.”

Young said the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion has to make the best de­ci­sions for T&T go­ing in­to the fu­ture.

“To me, that is a very sim­ple an­swer, it has to be the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.”

In man­ag­ing the coun­try’s af­fairs, Young said the Gov­ern­ment fo­cused its fight against cor­rup­tion by re­cov­er­ing $900 mil­lion of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey “by go­ing af­ter sev­er­al bonds” and let­ters of cred­it in the OAS con­tract of the Point Fortin to San Fer­nan­do High­way scan­dal project un­der­tak­en by the UNC.

The Gov­ern­ment took con­trol of the project which was opened last year.

Among the achieve­ments are:

* The PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion al­so went af­ter wrong­do­ers in the Es­tate Man­age­ment Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment (EM­BD) Com­pa­ny, and he not­ed that for­mer UNC min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal al­so has to put in a de­fence in the EM­BD mat­ter.

* Tax­pay­ers were al­so bur­dened with a $120 mil­lion over­pric­ing of the Eden Gar­dens lands in Freeport by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, which is be­fore the court. He said the Gov­ern­ment has man­aged to re­duce the cost of in­fra­struc­tur­al projects “be­cause there is no longer any fat be­ing put on­to the pric­ing.” He said there was “a num­ber of ini­tia­tives in the fight against cor­rup­tion. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, in my view, it has not moved as quick­ly as I, as a cit­i­zen, would have liked.”

* The 2019 re­moval of the $100 cot­ton bills which were re­placed by a new $100 poly­mer note, Young said, al­so stamped out cor­rup­tion through stored mon­ey.

* The es­tab­lish­ment of the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice to train young peo­ple was a plus for them.

* Young said the es­tab­lish­ment of the Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund (NIF) which was over­sub­scribed, was an­oth­er ac­com­plish­ment of the PNM.

* The Gov­ern­ment al­so ad­dressed the seabridge fi­as­co by pur­chas­ing fast fer­ries APT James and Buc­co Reef, while the Coast Guard was pro­vid­ed with two cape-class ves­sels.

* Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Young said the Gov­ern­ment set up a par­al­lel health­care sys­tem to treat pa­tients and opened the Ari­ma and Point Fortin hos­pi­tals.

* Con­struc­tion of the bil­lion-dol­lar Cen­tral Block of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal is un­der­way.

* He said while the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty has been re­struc­tur­ing, sev­er­al boost­er sta­tions were opened and wells dug to sup­ply wa­ter to thou­sands of peo­ple who nev­er had ac­cess to a pipe-borne sup­ply.

* One of the tough­est de­ci­sions the Gov­ern­ment had to make was the clo­sure of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, which was in­cur­ring loss­es. “It was a dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion. It is nev­er easy deal­ing with the sta­tus quo in such a man­ner.” The work­ers of the re­fin­ery were paid $2.7 bil­lion.

To­day the suc­cess­ful re­struc­tur­ing of the re­fin­ery has seen “Her­itage mak­ing bil­lions of dol­lars in prof­its,” while Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny has been earn­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars an­nu­al­ly. Re­cent­ly, ten com­pa­nies sub­mit­ted bids for the op­er­a­tion of the re­fin­ery.

* En­er­gy Man­age­ment: Young said the CEO of BP in Lon­don, Mur­ray Auch­in­closs, has been re­port­ing glob­al­ly on the num­ber of projects they have en­gaged with T&T. One is the re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG. Shell’s CEO, Wael Sawan, Young said, al­so spoke about their strong re­la­tion­ship with the T&T Gov­ern­ment. In the face of Venezuela’s un­rest, Young said Man­a­tee will pro­ceed. The Drag­on gas project is al­so go­ing full steam ahead with a goal to get the first gas by 2027. Sev­er­al shal­low wa­ter bid rounds have al­so been com­plet­ed.