Gail Alexan­der

There’s been ex­ten­sive progress on pro­posed law to reg­u­larise the pub­lic trans­port sys­tem in­clud­ing “PH” and “H “ taxis, max­is and Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion net­work – but all sides in Par­lia­ment must sup­port laws to pro­tect the pub­lic against the “mon­sters” walk­ing around T&T.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al- Rawi said so yes­ter­day as the body of 23 year old court clerk An­drea Bharatt was found - down a precipice in the Heights of Aripo . Bharatt dis­ap­peared Jan­u­ary 29 af­ter get­ting in­to a ve­hi­cle in Ari­ma . It was lat­er found the car car­ried false “H” li­cense plates.

Al- Rawi said, “As as a hu­man be­ing, fa­ther, broth­er and un­cle, I can­not imag­ine the grief that has be­fall­en this fam­i­ly and the tor­ture they must be in . I refuse to be one of those politi­cians who prof­it on bad news by turn­ing up to be count­ed among peo­ple who are now ex­press­ing care and con­cerns.”

He said the peo­ple and the Prime Min­is­ter had al­lowed him func­tion to help in sit­u­a­tions like this one and in the dis­charge of his du­ties for Bharatt , mur­dered teenage Ashan­ti Ri­ley and many oth­ers like them, he’s had the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to present law that which could have lent some as­sis­tance in the cur­rent is­sue:

“Mon­sters are ca­pa­ble of walk­ing among us in so­ci­ety when peo­ple don’t try to fix the sys­tem. We’ve pre­sent­ed a lot of work to deal with the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem but it’s in­cum­bent for all to work and pass it. It’s time for the mon­sters to be un­masked and for all el­e­ments of so­ci­ety to un­der­stand we must work to­geth­er,”

Af­ter Ri­ley’s mur­der last De­cem­ber, Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley man­dat­ed Gov­ern­ment to for­mu­late law to reg­u­late “PH” dri­vers.

Al- Rawi said there’s been ex­ten­sive progress on for­mu­la­tion of pro­pos­als and con­sul­ta­tions will have to be done on them.

The pro­posed sys­tem will reg­u­late not on­ly “PH” dri­vers, but all trans­port for hire – whether part time or full time “H” taxis and maxi taxis, PTSC’s sys­tem and che­quered band taxis.

It al­so es­tab­lish­es a maxi taxi sys­tem for rur­al ar­eas . The sys­tem al­so in­volves ra­dio fre­quen­cy li­cense plates which will iden­ti­fy a dri­ver, on what route the ve­hi­cle is sup­posed to be and its lo­ca­tion at any point.

Al- Rawi said bills brought to Par­lia­ment for the pub­lic good re­quire the sup­port of both Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion – and the lat­ter had re­fused to sup­port sev­er­al which could have con­tributed to pre­vent­ing crimes such what be­fell Bharatt.

“ It’s gross­ly dis­re­spect­ful to wit­ness UNC’s Khadi­jah Ameen in a can­dle­light vig­il for the vic­tim when she could have done her part to­wards pass­ing laws to pro­tect peo­ple in­clud­ing this young girl and every­one else,” he said.

Among bills which he said the Op­po­si­tion didn’t sup­port and which could have con­tributed to pre­vent­ing Bharatt’s kid­nap and mur­der were the 2017 Bail Bill , the 2017 Kid­nap Bill, the pro­pos­al for fur­ther bail re­stric­tion, an Ev­i­dence Bill which would have al­lowed peo­ple to tes­ti­fy if they were afraid to - and the Ev­i­dence Amend­ment Bill be­ing de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment to­day and de­signed to se­cure con­vic­tions of per­pe­tra­tors.

He al­so not­ed that pro­pos­als in the Sex Of­fend­ers Reg­istry Leg­is­la­tion was an­oth­er el­e­ment that could have un­masked mon­sters . “But civ­il so­ci­ety ob­ject­ed to pro­pos­als say­ing we were go­ing too far too fast ,”