Chester Sam­bra­no

The mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion pro­gramme has once again been ex­tend­ed, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing on the Eye on De­pen­den­cy pro­gramme on i95.5FM, Hinds said the num­ber of rec­om­mend­ed ap­pli­ca­tions as of the end of 2022 re­ceived by his Min­istry was 9,133.

“I would have ap­proved 9,133 of them. A to­tal of 449 were not rec­om­mend­ed,” he said, adding some the rea­sons for some of them be­ing dis­re­gard­ed be­fore reach­ing his desk were be­cause of breach­es in the law on the part of ap­pli­cants.

“Some of them would have com­mit­ted crimes in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

The min­is­ter said there are now 4,710 pend­ing ap­pli­ca­tions.

“So, we gave com­fort to those who were here...I hard­ly hear of any un­em­ployed Venezue­lans here,” he said.

He ex­plained that since the start of the Mi­grant Reg­is­tra­tion Pro­gramme in April 2019, the Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to con­tin­ue ex­tend­ing it every year.

How­ev­er, it on­ly ben­e­fits those il­le­gal mi­grants who were here be­fore the pro­gramme, as those who come in il­le­gal­ly af­ter­wards will be de­port­ed.

The ques­tion of ex­pired mi­grant cards was al­so raised but Hinds said this was a mat­ter of ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“There are many cards, up­dat­ed cards, sit­ting at the Min­istry (Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty) that they (mi­grants) have not come to col­lect,” he said.

Un­der the pro­gramme, ap­proved mi­grants would be able to work in this coun­try for one year.

Venezue­lans who are reg­is­tered will al­so ben­e­fit from free emer­gency med­ical ser­vices at pub­lic health in­sti­tu­tion.

Hinds said many of them have been in this coun­try for a long time but the num­bers in­creased in re­cent years due to so­cial and po­lit­i­cal cir­cum­stances in Venezuela.

When the first reg­is­tra­tion was done, there were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16,500 mi­grants.

But Hinds said since then things have im­proved in Venezuela and many of them have opt­ed to re­turn home.

Dur­ing the in­ter­view, Hinds said bor­der se­cu­ri­ty re­mains a top pri­or­i­ty for the Gov­ern­ment, giv­en the high vol­ume of il­le­gal guns and drugs en­ter­ing our shores.

He said the Coastal Radar Sys­tem is now 100 per cent op­er­a­tional and func­tion­al

“Every as­pect of it,” he said, adding that an up­grade is now un­der fo­cus.

Hinds al­so said they are ex­pect­ing some ad­di­tion­al ves­sels for the TTPS Coastal and River­ine Unit by the end of March but did not give a fig­ure.

“To make them far more ef­fec­tive to deal with our rivers and to deal with our coast­lines from the shore­line to two miles out,” he said.

He al­so said those po­lice of­fi­cers have ben­e­fit­ted from im­proved spe­cial­i­ty train­ing.

On the is­sue of il­le­gal firearm re­trieval, he said act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Christo­pher has a new plan and is reen­er­gised to re­trieve il­le­gal firearms.

He said they are now “aim­ing to mop up” the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12,000 il­le­gal guns in this coun­try, adding these weapons con­tribute to many of T&T’s homi­cides.

He said in­ves­ti­gat­ing those crimes has al­so seen im­prove­ment.

“25 cold cas­es were solved last year,” he said.

He re­ferred to calls for his re­moval by high­light­ing re­ports of high mur­der counts dur­ing the tenure of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“We have been a vi­o­lent so­ci­ety for a very long time,” he said.

In giv­ing a break­down of the clas­si­fi­ca­tions of mur­ders for 2022, Hinds said gang vi­o­lence (245) ac­count­ed for most of the 605 killings. He said to date, 47 re­main un­clas­si­fied.

“Those are some of the things we are up against,” he said.

The Min­is­ter al­so boast­ed about the gains be­ing made by the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre.

He said while it is cus­tom­ary that au­top­sies are not done on the week­end, on Sat­ur­day, one was done on a body which was found to re­trieve bal­lis­tic ev­i­dence that as­sist­ed the po­lice in their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

He al­so said 21 po­lice of­fi­cers have been trained at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (FSC) and have be­come cer­ti­fied ex­am­in­ers.

“You now have po­lice of­fi­cers who have ac­quired that tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ty and have en­hanced the num­bers and there­fore, we will see more res­o­lu­tions when firearms are used in crime scenes,” Hinds said.

He said an ad­di­tion­al five of­fi­cers were al­so trained in the DNA unit of the (FSC).