RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

The surge in vi­o­lent crime across the coun­try is threat­en­ing the sur­vival of 24-hour gas sta­tions, ac­cord­ing to Reval Chat­ter­goon, pres­i­dent-elect of the Own­er Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (ODA).

He said so in a re­lease is­sued hours af­ter an at­tempt­ed rob­bery at a Char­lieville, Ch­agua­nas ser­vice sta­tion yes­ter­day, in which a sus­pect was killed.

The sus­pect, whose iden­ti­ty re­mains un­known, fired at po­lice who re­spond­ed to the rob­bery at 2 am, lead­ing to a high-speed chase and shootout. Po­lice re­cov­ered a firearm and stolen items.

“Sta­tions that were es­sen­tial dur­ing the pan­dem­ic are now be­ing tar­get­ed,” Chat­ter­goon said hours af­ter the in­ci­dent, not­ing that al­though 80 per cent of sales are cash­less, crime con­tin­ues to dis­rupt busi­ness.

“Our staff and cus­tomers are im­pos­ing their own cur­fews out of fear. We’ve seen sales drop by as much as 60 per cent,” he said.

Chat­ter­goon said the im­pact of crime ex­tends far be­yond busi­ness own­ers and “af­fects every­one—our staff, cus­tomers, ven­dors, and the com­mu­ni­ties we serve. Run­ning a 24-hour sta­tion isn’t just cost­ly, it’s dan­ger­ous.”

He added: “More than $30 bil­lion has been spent, yet crime is still ram­pant. Do cit­i­zens or busi­ness own­ers feel safer? Where is the re­turn on that in­vest­ment?”

Chat­ter­goon called for a more strate­gic ap­proach to pub­lic safe­ty and sug­gest­ed in­creased pa­trols, more road­blocks with marked po­lice ve­hi­cles, and bet­ter re­source al­lo­ca­tion to po­lice sta­tions.

“This is not a call for a state of emer­gency, but for ex­ist­ing re­sources to be bet­ter used. Po­lice sta­tions need re­sources, and there must be ac­count­abil­i­ty to en­sure those re­sources are man­aged prop­er­ly,” he said.

He al­so urged Gov­ern­ment to pro­mote ex­ist­ing pro­grammes aimed at crime pre­ven­tion, high­light­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able through min­istries like Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice.

“There are plen­ty of pro­grammes out there but they need to be ag­gres­sive­ly mar­ket­ed. Crime is not about a lack of op­por­tu­ni­ty—it’s about choic­es,” Chat­ter­goon said.

He em­pha­sised that the ODA is com­mit­ted to work­ing with law en­force­ment and oth­er stake­hold­ers to im­prove pub­lic safe­ty.

“Ser­vice sta­tions are es­sen­tial to the pub­lic, but they are di­rect­ly im­pact­ed by crime. We are hope­ful that with the new Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, we will see pos­i­tive changes,” he said.