Raphael John-Lall

Some busi­ness lead­ers and a se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert agree that the Gov­ern­ment’s plans to im­ple­ment the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs) through­out the coun­try can have a pos­i­tive im­pact on the busi­ness sec­tor.

The Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) (Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures) Bill, 2026, was de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate on Tues­day and de­bate on it con­tin­ues.

The UNC Gov­ern­ment sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to fol­low the ex­am­ple of Ja­maica and in­tro­duce ZOSOs, as the coun­try seeks to take ad­van­tage of the re­duc­tion in mur­ders and oth­er crimes dur­ing a State of Emer­gency (SoE) that is ex­pect­ed to end on Jan­u­ary 31, 2026.

Ja­maica es­tab­lished ZOSOs un­der the 2017 Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures Act, to tack­le high crime in spe­cif­ic ar­eas through en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment and reg­u­lar­ly ex­tend­ed by Par­lia­ment.

On Thurs­day, Pres­i­dent of the Own­ers Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Reval Chat­ter­goon told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that any ini­tia­tive aimed at stim­u­lat­ing crime re­duc­tion to se­cure law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es is al­ways wel­comed and com­mend­ed the Gov­ern­ment for tak­ing a strong stance against crime.

He re­ferred to sta­tis­tics which show that the run­ning to­tal of mur­ders for the year so far is 26 in 22 days for Jan­u­ary and said this con­verts to a rate of 1.18 mur­ders per day and pos­si­bly a count of 431 mur­ders by the end of the year; de­spite the coun­ty be­ing in a state of emer­gency.

This he said is still not good enough.

Hav­ing said this, he said he does not be­lieve that the ZOSO would yield any in­cre­men­tal pos­i­tive re­sults than that al­ready ex­pe­ri­enced un­der the present State of Emer­gency as the Bill does not take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and how zones and the cur­few will im­pact busi­ness­es.

“There are a lot of vague ar­eas in the Bill in its present form that will sure­ly im­pact the re­tail fu­el in­dus­try that re­lies on free­dom of move­ment. The pre­sen­ta­tion of this Bill is more wor­ri­some to the 99 per cent of law-abid­ing ver­sus the less than one per­cent for which this bill is aimed at cap­tur­ing.”

When asked if the Gov­ern­ment’s ini­tia­tive would work in tar­get­ed high-risk ar­eas, he replied by say­ing T&T is a small coun­try and no one area with­in T&T is self-con­tained.

He added that each com­mu­ni­ty de­pends on an­oth­er and even if on­ly some ar­eas are tar­get­ed un­der the ZOSO, the en­tire coun­try would be af­fect­ed as a large por­tion of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty is de­pen­dent on the free­dom of move­ment with­in the coun­try and not on­ly the re­tail fu­el in­dus­try.

“As­sum­ing that one per­son is com­mit­ting the crime and there are no re­peat of­fend­ers…less than one per cent of the pop­u­la­tion is hold­ing the en­tire pop­u­la­tion at ran­som and con­tributed to law­less­ness. In oth­er words, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 99 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion may be af­fect­ed by cer­tain el­e­ments of this Bill be­cause of the ac­tions of the less than one per cent of the pop­u­la­tion who com­mit­ted a crime.”

He then said clar­i­fi­ca­tion is need­ed on some ar­eas of the leg­is­la­tion:

1.The reg­is­tra­tion of weapons with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre pri­or to the con­duct of op­er­a­tions with­in a Zone (Clause 23) ver­sus a re-reg­is­tra­tion of weapons. Civil­ians are man­dat­ed to reg­is­ter with In­te­grat­ed Bal­lis­tics Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (IBIS) for bal­lis­tic test­ing be­fore the weapons can be legal­ly used and civil­ians have a small win­dow for this to be com­plet­ed. Is it that Gov­ern­ment-is­sued weapons are not IBIS test­ed and now have to reg­is­ter be­fore con­duct­ing op­er­a­tions with­in a Zone? All firearms utilised by state agen­cies should be doc­u­ment­ed, at min­i­mum, by the same stan­dard as those ap­proved for use by civil­ians;

2. The du­ra­tion of the cur­few and whether it is a cur­few for 24 hours in a day for three days? Or a few hours over a span of sev­er­al days that can­not ex­ceed sev­en­ty-two hours in to­tal?

3. The as­sign­ment of zones and if these would be based on elec­toral, cor­po­ra­tion or T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) bound­aries or as­signed by nam­ing spe­cif­ic streets;

4. How one can ap­ply for au­tho­ri­sa­tion (cur­few pass) from a mem­ber of a Joint Force in charge of en­forc­ing the cur­few; and

5. What would be the over­all ad­di­tion­al cost for the State for this Bill to be im­ple­ment­ed? Ex­am­ple, the cost for sig­nage, ad­min­is­tra­tive and sta­tion­ary costs, Ju­di­cia­ry, Com­mit­tee salaries (if any), over­time, in­fra­struc­ture, equip­ment.

Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Busi­ness Cham­ber, Bal­dath Ma­haraj, who weighed in on the mat­ter told the Busi­ness Guardian that 2026 start­ed with a sense of ur­gency for the Cham­ber as they nav­i­gate these sig­nif­i­cant leg­isla­tive changes.

“Re­gard­ing the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill 2026, our stance re­mains one of firm, de­ci­sive sup­port, ground­ed in the re­al­i­ty that the busi­ness-as-usu­al ap­proach to se­cu­ri­ty is no longer sus­tain­able. And does not give us the de­sired re­sult. We sup­port the in­tro­duc­tion of ZOSOs be­cause the pen­du­lum of crim­i­nal­i­ty has swung too far, and the time has come to pri­ori­tise the safe­ty of the law-abid­ing ma­jor­i­ty over the com­fort of those who dis­rupt our peace.”

He said in Ch­agua­nas and the wider Cen­tral re­gion, they have seen first-hand how crime acts as a “hid­den tax”, forc­ing mem­bers in­to self-im­posed cur­fews with the ex­tra cost for se­cu­ri­ty.

“Tar­get­ed ZOSOs could work ef­fec­tive­ly in spe­cif­ic hotspots with­in the Bor­ough by re­plac­ing the re­ac­tive polic­ing of the past with a sus­tained, in­tel­li­gence-led se­cu­ri­ty force oc­cu­pa­tion that ac­tu­al­ly holds ground. We be­lieve that by re­mov­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ty from our streets and restor­ing a high vis­i­bil­i­ty pres­ence, these zones will help busi­ness­es feel safer and en­cour­age shop­pers to re­turn to our com­mer­cial hubs with­out fear.”

How­ev­er, he said the Cham­ber’s sup­port is not a blank check.

“For a ZOSO to be suc­cess­ful in Ch­agua­nas, it must be im­ple­ment­ed with a prop­er, trans­par­ent strat­e­gy that in­cludes deep stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tion. We have al­ready com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the au­thor­i­ties that while we ac­cept some lev­el of dis­rup­tion to en­sure we take back our streets, we must en­sure that these op­er­a­tions do not in­ad­ver­tent­ly sti­fle trade or cre­ate ad­di­tion­al bur­dens for the very en­tre­pre­neurs they are meant to pro­tect.”

State of readi­ness

Se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian as the State of Emer­gency ap­proach­es its like­ly con­clu­sion at the end of this month, it is im­por­tant for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to un­der­stand that the se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment is not re­vert­ing to “nor­mal” but it is a tran­si­tion­ing.

He said in place of emer­gency pow­ers, the state is ex­pect­ed to sus­tain law en­force­ment mo­men­tum through Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions, in­creased pa­trols, in­tel­li­gence-led de­ploy­ments, and height­ened vig­i­lance, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the Car­ni­val sea­son draws near.

He said for busi­ness­es, this tran­si­tion should be viewed as an op­por­tu­ni­ty, not a pause.

“The con­tin­u­a­tion of high-vis­i­bil­i­ty polic­ing, rapid re­sponse ca­pa­bil­i­ties, and tar­get­ed op­er­a­tions will play a crit­i­cal role in main­tain­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence and sup­port­ing com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty dur­ing peak eco­nom­ic pe­ri­ods. These mea­sures are de­signed to re­as­sure cus­tomers, pro­tect staff, and se­cure com­mer­cial zones, es­pe­cial­ly those with high foot traf­fic, ex­tend­ed op­er­at­ing hours, and cash-based trans­ac­tions.”

He ar­gued that ZOSOs are not mere­ly en­force­ment tools but they are al­so sta­bil­i­ty mech­a­nisms de­signed to re­store con­fi­dence, or­der, and eco­nom­ic con­ti­nu­ity.

“When law en­force­ment es­tab­lish­es and sus­tains 360-de­gree over­watch across key com­mer­cial and eco­nom­ic cor­ri­dors, the im­me­di­ate and long-term ben­e­fits to busi­ness­es are clear: re­duced crim­i­nal free­dom of move­ment, dis­rup­tion of or­ga­nized crim­i­nal net­works, and the cre­ation of a pre­dictable op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment. High-vis­i­bil­i­ty pa­trols, in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions, and per­sis­tent pres­ence sup­press crime not by chance, but by de­sign.”