Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The da­ta on var­i­ous crime sta­tis­tics for 2025 was not pub­lished on the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) web­site pri­or to Oc­to­ber, since “there were some is­sues,” ac­cord­ing to Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der.

Alexan­der was re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Melanie Roberts-Radg­man in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day. Roberts-Radg­man had said that, giv­en that the TTPS has re­moved and/or failed to pub­lish crime sta­tis­tics on its web­site for the year 2025, if Alexan­der could in­di­cate the to­tal num­ber of crim­i­nal of­fences re­port­ed across all di­vi­sions from May to Sep­tem­ber and the to­tal num­ber of crim­i­nal of­fences de­tect­ed across all di­vi­sions for the same pe­ri­od.

Alexan­der de­tailed the sta­tis­tics, which he said were pub­lished by the TTPS web­site through its in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy De­part­ment on Oc­to­ber 24.

Roberts-Radg­man asked why the da­ta was not pub­lished pri­or to Oc­to­ber 2025. Alexan­der said, ”In the age of tech­nol­o­gy and want­i­ng to give mem­bers of the pub­lic the cor­rect in­for­ma­tion, there were some is­sues. It has since been re­solved; the sys­tem is now up and run­ning.”

He did not say what the “is­sues” were.

Alexan­der said the TTPS, through its in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy de­part­ment, was cur­rent­ly re­view­ing the process for pub­lish­ing the da­ta on its of­fi­cial web­site. Once the ver­i­fi­ca­tion and ap­proval are grant­ed, he said, the process is com­plet­ed and the in­for­ma­tion is made pub­licly avail­able on the web­site.

On Roberts-Radg­man’s query about mea­sures be­ing tak­en to im­ple­ment ad­e­quate/ad­di­tion­al warn­ing sig­nage, life­guards and beach pa­trols across high-risk beach­es af­ter re­cent drown­ings, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said 14 drown­ings oc­curred dur­ing the pe­ri­od iden­ti­fied—five at Ma­yaro and six at To­co—all of which oc­curred out­side of the pa­trol hours and out of the pa­trol ar­eas. He said there was one which oc­curred in Los Iros, which oc­curred be­yond the pa­trol area, and two in Mara­cas.

“We haven’t had such a spike ei­ther be­fore or since the pe­ri­od iden­ti­fied in the ques­tion, and we are in­struct­ed that there is there­fore no need for any ad­di­tion­al sig­nage or change to the ex­ist­ing arrange­ments,” Sturge added.

Leg­isla­tive agen­da

in 3 weeks

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie al­so told Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Melanie Roberts-Radg­man that the process lead­ing to the set­tle­ment of the Gov­ern­ment’s leg­isla­tive agen­da last­ed sev­er­al months.

Roberts-Radg­man had asked if the Gov­ern­ment would present the agen­da. Je­re­mie said the agen­da was in its fi­nal stages of de­vel­op­ment, and it was an­tic­i­pat­ed that it would be read in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives with­in the next three weeks.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Clyde El­der, al­so replied to Roberts-Radg­man on her queries about To­ba­go’s wa­ter cri­sis, say­ing, “We will fix it.”

Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark re­it­er­at­ed—yet again—his rul­ing for Sen­a­tors to keep their cell­phones on silent, not­ing he had made the call many times be­fore, and cir­cu­lat­ed a pro­ce­dur­al note on the use/abuse of mo­bile phones. Mark said, “We don’t want to reach the point where we have to ban cell­phones from this cham­ber, but if you all push the Chair to do that, it will be con­sid­ered.”

Al­so yes­ter­day, UNC PRO Kirk Meighoo was ap­point­ed a tem­po­rary Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor in the ab­sence of Min­is­ter Do­minic Smith.

Lia­son Co­or­di­na­tor (Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter), Ash­worth Jack, was al­so ap­point­ed a tem­po­rary sen­a­tor to act for Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor/Trade Min­is­ter Ka­ma Ma­haraj.