Ch­agua­nas East MP Van­dana Mo­hit is urg­ing the gov­ern­ment to take more ac­tion to ad­dress the ex­tor­tion is­sue af­fect­ing busi­ness­es in Cunu­pia and War­renville.

In a re­lease, the MP stat­ed that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in Cunu­pia and War­renville are in cri­sis, "as the scourge of ex­tor­tion grows unchecked in these ar­eas."

Mo­hit ques­tioned when the cur­rent gov­ern­ment will "stop ig­nor­ing the cries of the peo­ple and take de­ci­sive ac­tion to end this men­ace?" She said their fail­ure to act on the is­sue will on­ly "em­bold­en crim­i­nals, desta­bi­lize com­mu­ni­ties, and de­stroy liveli­hoods."

She said de­spite nu­mer­ous calls for in­ter­ven­tion in this mat­ter, "the gov­ern­ment has failed to adopt a de­ci­sive strat­e­gy to ad­dress this new and alarm­ing crim­i­nal phe­nom­e­non." Due to this in­ac­tion, Mo­hit said lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs and busi­ness own­ers are now liv­ing in fear, and are un­able to op­er­ate with the con­fi­dence and se­cu­ri­ty they de­serve.

Mo­hit added that re­ports from busi­ness own­ers in­di­cate a rise in in­ci­dents of in­di­vid­u­als and or­ga­nized groups de­mand­ing "pro­tec­tion mon­ey" un­der threat of vi­o­lence. She stat­ed that this has led to "an at­mos­phere of in­tim­i­da­tion" which has erod­ed the trust in law en­force­ment and pub­lic safe­ty.

She al­so added that many are fear­ful of be­ing tar­get­ed, which re­sults in many of these crimes go­ing un­re­port­ed, which em­bold­ens per­pe­tra­tors who face no con­se­quences for their ac­tions.

In the re­lease, Mo­hit added that one busi­ness own­er, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, shared, "We are work­ing hard to keep our busi­ness­es afloat in this tough econ­o­my, and now we’re forced to deal with this added bur­den. We feel aban­doned by the gov­ern­ment and help­less in the face of these threats."

Mo­hit said the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has "re­peat­ed­ly sound­ed the alarm about the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, but the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion re­mains silent." She said the gov­ern­ment's fail­ure to act en­ables crim­i­nal el­e­ments to thrive while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly un­der­min­ing the "en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty of com­mu­ni­ties like Cunu­pia and War­renville."

Mo­hit posed sev­er­al sug­ges­tions to deal with the ris­ing rate of ex­tor­tion in such com­mu­ni­ties:

-De­vel­op and Im­ple­ment an An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Strat­e­gy: Es­tab­lish a ded­i­cat­ed task force to in­ves­ti­gate and dis­man­tle crim­i­nal groups en­gag­ing in ex­tor­tion.

-In­crease Po­lice Pres­ence: Bol­ster the po­lice pres­ence in Cunu­pia and War­renville to de­ter crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties and re­store pub­lic con­fi­dence.

-En­cour­age Re­port­ing Through Con­fi­den­tial Chan­nels: In­tro­duce mech­a­nisms for anony­mous re­port­ing of ex­tor­tion in­ci­dents to em­pow­er vic­tims to come for­ward with­out fear of re­tal­i­a­tion.

-Sup­port the Busi­ness Com­mu­ni­ty: Col­lab­o­rate with cham­bers of com­merce and lo­cal stake­hold­ers to pro­tect busi­ness­es and en­sure their con­tin­ued growth.