Busi­ness heads are wel­com­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s, com­mit­ment to “over­haul and re­dou­bling” ef­forts against crime this year, which is ex­pect­ed to be­gin soon with pub­lic con­ver­sa­tions.

They said they were look­ing for­ward to be­ing in­clud­ed in these talks and were will­ing to as­sist in any way pos­si­ble.

Head of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA), Gre­go­ry Aboud said he un­der­stood why some peo­ple were scep­ti­cal but did not share their out­look.

“I do not share the view that con­ver­sa­tion can­not help us, sim­ply be­cause many of the mea­sures which could pro­tect this coun­try and pro­tect its cit­i­zens have not been im­ple­ment­ed es­pe­cial­ly on the law en­force­ment side and there­fore a con­ver­sa­tion could bring to the fore con­crete sug­ges­tions which have not been em­ployed, which have not been in­tro­duced which could help to pro­tect the cit­i­zens,” he said.

“So, in that re­gard, I do not share the neg­a­tiv­i­ty about the talk. I am anx­ious for the con­ver­sa­tions to start and it’s a mat­ter of great na­tion­al emer­gency and those con­ver­sa­tions need to start im­me­di­ate­ly.”

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T, Ni­rad Ti­warie, told Guardian Me­dia the Joint Cham­bers not on­ly stood ready to as­sist, but would al­so be work­ing to­geth­er to come up with so­lu­tions and pos­si­ble ways to sup­port the gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, he not­ed, ac­tion need­ed to fol­low the talks.

“Of course, the proof of the pud­ding will be in the eat­ing. So, as much as we gen­uine­ly look for­ward to the en­gage­ment, it is the de­lib­er­ate and fo­cused fol­low-up ac­tion, as well as hold­ing peo­ple to ac­count for re­sults that will ul­ti­mate­ly mat­ter,” he said.

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Charles Pash­ley said they, too, were look­ing for­ward to the con­sul­ta­tions and mea­sures to ad­dress crime, and be­lieves so­lu­tions were at­tain­able.

“If the is­sues are sys­tem­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fied and a so­lu­tion iden­ti­fied, ad­dressed and im­ple­ment­ed for each is­sue, this should as­sist in mit­i­gat­ing crime. We look for­ward to hav­ing trans­par­ent and fruit­ful dis­cus­sion with the Gov­ern­ment on what they deem are the is­sues and the plans in place to ad­dress these is­sues. The crime is­sues are com­plex but we al­so feel that no is­sue is too large to be ad­dressed and what is re­quired is the lead­er­ship de­sire to solve,” he said.

The year 2022 end­ed as the blood­i­est in the coun­try’s his­to­ry, with over 600 peo­ple be­ing mur­dered.

Pub­lic fear and con­cern grew as the bod­ies con­tin­ue to drop. It is against this back­ground that Dr Row­ley said these in­creased ef­forts will be em­ployed.

He said they will be fo­cused on five ar­eas, the sec­ond of which was men­tioned ear­li­er this year but nev­er ma­te­ri­alised:

1. The util­i­sa­tion of the con­sid­er­able re­source al­lo­ca­tion to this sec­tor.

2. The pub­lic health con­sid­er­a­tion of crim­i­nal con­duct in our so­ci­ety.

3. A re­newed at­tempt at par­lia­men­tary in­ter­ven­tion in sup­port of the work of agen­cies and in­sti­tu­tions.

4. A con­tin­ued iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and ur­gent sup­port for “at risk” groups and ex­pan­sion of the many youth de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes.

5. Im­prove­ments in sus­tained and ef­fec­tive law en­force­ment.

—Rishard Khan