On the walls of busi­ness places in Ari­ma will soon have 'Want­ed' posters show­ing the im­ages and de­scrip­tions of peo­ple sus­pect­ed of rob­beries, mur­ders, shoot­ings, fraud, etc.

This will form part of a watch group ini­tia­tive among the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to the Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (ABA) pres­i­dent Reval Chat­ter­goon, the in­ten­tion is "to put peo­ple on con­stant alert so they can quick­ly iden­ti­fy these peo­ple who are want­ed and they would be able to call the po­lice im­me­di­ate­ly and say 'I see some­one walk in here fit­ting a de­scrip­tion.'

"This, we be­lieve, will help make a dent in crime...it's all about se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty."

Chat­ter­goon lament­ed that the North­ern Di­vi­sion has the high­est record in crime and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties in­clud­ing mur­ders and shoot­ings. He said, how­ev­er, the work of po­lice of­fi­cers from the 12 sta­tions in the di­vi­sion was still be­ing ham­pered due to lim­it­ed ve­hi­cles.

To date, the ABA has as­sist­ed with the re­pair of nine ve­hi­cles which are back on the road.

In Feb­ru­ary 2018, the T&T Guardian had re­port­ed that at the Ari­ma Po­lice Sta­tion, specif­i­cal­ly, there were on­ly two work­ing po­lice ve­hi­cles to ser­vice the en­tire area, one of which is used for court pur­pos­es, in­clud­ing trans­fer­ring hold­ing-cell pris­on­ers from the sta­tion to the Ari­ma Mag­is­trates’ Court.

Chat­ter­goon, al­so the pres­i­dent of the Ari­ma Po­lice Sta­tion Coun­cil (AP­SC), a stake­hold­er group, said then that he was very dis­heart­ened when he learnt this and de­cid­ed to act on be­half of of­fi­cers and the cit­i­zens in the dis­trict.

“For ap­prox­i­mate­ly three months as pres­i­dent, I have ob­served the poor work­ing con­di­tions of the of­fi­cers. I learnt how im­pov­er­ished the Ari­ma Po­lice Sta­tion is in terms of the lack of func­tion­ing ve­hi­cles and lack of re­sources to re­pair the nu­mer­ous oth­ers through­out the di­vi­sion,” he said then.

Sad­ly, the com­ment Chat­ter­goon made then still stands to­day as he said that the po­lice of­fi­cers still work un­der de­plorable con­di­tions.

Chat­ter­goon is till call­ing for ac­count­abil­i­ty, as he said there is "very lit­tle to show for the ap­prox­i­mate­ly $41 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed over the last six years to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty."

Re­cent­ly, Chat­ter­goon said he held dis­cus­sions with the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young where he raised sev­er­al is­sues and con­cerns amongst the burgess­es. He is hope­ful that the min­is­ter will seek to ad­dress it soon.

He has al­so held sev­er­al dis­cus­sions with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith in­clud­ing the is­su­ing of firearm users li­cence for le­git­i­mate ap­pli­cants, some more than six years old.

An­oth­er is­sue Chat­ter­goon high­light­ed was the clo­sure of the Ari­ma Dis­trict Of­fice. The of­fice closed down in ear­ly 2018 caus­ing scores of cit­i­zens who need to con­duct busi­ness to ei­ther go as far as the Tu­na­puna or San­gre Grande for ser­vice.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to the clo­sure last year, Ari­ma May­or Lisa Mor­ris-Julien said the time has reached for Ari­ma to get its own ad­min­is­tra­tive com­plex to avoid oc­cur­rences such as these. It is a space, she said, where all gov­ern­ment agen­cies can be un­der one roof.