GEISHA ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce has joined with the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) and the wider pub­lic in com­mend­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) for their crime re­duc­tion ef­forts.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the Cham­ber not­ed that three months af­ter his ap­point­ment as Com­mis­sion­er, Grif­fith has brought a sense of hope to the pub­lic. in­clud­ing busi­ness­men, and seems set to re­store much-need­ed con­fi­dence in the TTPS.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce hopes that this will not on­ly con­tin­ue but that it will even­tu­al­ly re­sult in a vis­i­bly mea­sur­able re­duc­tion in crime. “Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith and his team have de­clared their in­ten­tion to use our tax dol­lars to at­tack crime and de­stroy crime net­works wher­ev­er they may ex­ist,” the Cham­ber said

How­ev­er, the busi­ness group said the ju­di­cia­ry needs to be more ef­fi­cient in dis­pens­ing jus­tice in a time­ly man­ner.

“While we ap­plaud this new en­er­gy in the TTPS, we al­so recog­nise that our coun­try will not ex­pe­ri­ence the lev­el of crime re­duc­tion that it has been cry­ing out for—and de­serves—un­less all el­e­ments of the jus­tice sys­tem are work­ing ef­fec­tive­ly and in sync.

“If, as we hope, the crime de­tec­tion rate im­proves and more sus­pects are de­liv­ered to the courts, we have to ex­pect that re­cent leg­isla­tive changes to the jus­tice sys­tem will trans­late in­to an equal­ly dy­nam­ic re­sponse by our courts,” the Cham­ber said.

The Cham­ber said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and the cit­i­zens have suf­fered for far too long un­der a struc­ture of crim­i­nal im­puni­ty and this has had a sig­nif­i­cant neg­a­tive im­pact on the cost and ease of do­ing busi­ness.

The state­ment con­tin­ued: “The T&T Cham­ber lauds Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith’s work so far and re­it­er­ates its com­mit­ment to work along­side him and his team to make our coun­try as safe and as crime-free as pos­si­ble.”