Ryan Ba­choo

The Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre has re­ceived a new forty (40) foot con­tain­er fur­nished with se­cured fab­ri­cat­ed cages and shelves, bar­code scan­ners and a lap­top com­put­er. It is for the pur­pose of ev­i­dence stor­age.

At a han­dover cer­e­mo­ny on Mon­day, the ev­i­dence stor­age con­tain­er was com­mis­sioned by Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Fitzger­ald Hinds, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the High Com­mis­sion­er of Cana­da to Trinidad and To­ba­go, His Ex­cel­len­cy Arif Ke­shani and Di­rec­tor of the Unit­ed Na­tions Re­gion­al Cen­tre for Peace, Dis­ar­ma­ment and De­vel­op­ment in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (UN­LIREC), Soledad Ur­ru­ela.

Speak­ing at the event, Hinds thanked UN­LIREC for fa­cil­i­tat­ing the do­na­tion of the forty (40) foot con­tain­er. He al­so ex­tend­ed grat­i­tude to His Ex­cel­len­cy Ke­shani for the fund­ing pro­vid­ed by the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da to con­struct the spe­cial pur­pose con­tain­er fa­cil­i­ty. The Min­is­ter em­pha­sized his com­mit­ment to on­go­ing projects with both in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners and wel­comed fu­ture col­lab­o­ra­tion, with a view to in­creas­ing safe­ty for all in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

High Com­mis­sion­er Ke­shani and Di­rec­tor of UN­LIREC, Ms. Soledad Ur­ru­ela, al­so de­liv­ered re­marks at the event. They both ac­knowl­edged the long­stand­ing bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship with Trinidad and To­ba­go; the suc­cess­es of on­go­ing ini­tia­tives; and com­mit­ted to con­tin­ued sup­port for the strength­en­ing of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty projects.

A Let­ter of Agree­ment (LoA) was al­so signed be­tween Min­is­ter Hinds and UN­LIREC Di­rec­tor Ms. Ur­ru­ela, to for­mal­ize the han­dover of the con­tain­er for use by the TTF­SC for the stor­age of ev­i­dence.

Al­so in at­ten­dance at the Han­dover Cer­e­mo­ny were Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary (Ag.) in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Ms. Denise Phillip; Di­rec­tor (Ag.) of the TTF­SC, Mr. Der­rick Sankar, who de­liv­ered wel­come re­marks; Deputy Di­rec­tor (Ag.) of the TTF­SC, Ms. Michelle Nas­seir; Se­nior Pol­i­cy Ad­vi­sor at UN­LIREC, Mr. Ja­son Fran­cis; Project Man­ag­er, Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Mr. Mark Lutch­man; and Deputy Di­rec­tor of the In­ter­na­tion­al Af­fairs Unit, Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Ma­jor (Ret’d) Richard Lynch.

Pri­or to the Han­dover Cer­e­mo­ny, the Min­is­ter host­ed a cour­tesy call with UN­LIREC Di­rec­tor Ms. Ur­ru­ela, who is vis­it­ing this coun­try. Dis­cus­sions re­in­forced the long­stand­ing bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and UN­LIREC, and fo­cused on deep­en­ing en­gage­ments as well as ex­pand­ing joint ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing ca­pac­i­ty build­ing for law en­force­ment and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers, in the area of firearm and bal­lis­tics analy­sis.