Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc.co.tt

Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing clos­er to in­tro­duc­ing a pol­i­cy that will al­low com­mu­ni­ties to ap­ply for ‘gat­ed’ sta­tus as a mea­sure to pro­tect them­selves from crime.

In its Gen­er­al Elec­tion man­i­festo, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) had pro­posed this move as part of its strat­e­gy to ad­dress crime and en­hance se­cu­ri­ty.

Speak­ing at the post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing yes­ter­day, Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen said an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee has been formed to draft the pol­i­cy for this ini­tia­tive.

“This is in keep­ing with the UNC’s po­si­tion on stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion. Stand-your-ground does not on­ly mean own­ing a gun and be­ing able to de­fend your home with force. It al­so means stand­ing your ground and pro­tect­ing your com­mu­ni­ties,” Ameen said.

The com­mit­tee has not been giv­en a dead­line for com­ple­tion.

Ameen said its job would be to “ex­am­ine all le­gal av­enues and ap­provals re­quired for com­mu­ni­ties’ res­i­dents to come to­geth­er by con­sen­sus, the agen­cies that will be re­quired to give ap­provals, those that will be re­quired to be con­sult­ed and to al­low those com­mu­ni­ties to be gat­ed.”

She ac­knowl­edged that in the past, com­mu­ni­ties would have tried to re­strict ac­cess to their neigh­bour­hoods but did not get the nec­es­sary ap­provals be­cause there were no set guide­lines.

In De­cem­ber 2023, the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) de­mol­ished a se­cu­ri­ty booth and bar­ri­cade that had been set up Bam­boo Num­ber 2, Val­sayn. This ac­tion came af­ter the cor­po­ra­tion is­sued no­tices of a vi­o­la­tion to the res­i­dents, deem­ing the struc­ture il­le­gal. The res­i­dents, led by com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist In­shan Ish­mael, had erect­ed the booth in re­sponse to a rise in crime in the area.

Asked whether the re­sources avail­able to dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties would be con­sid­ered dur­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion process, not­ing that some may have greater fi­nan­cial means than oth­ers, Ameen said not every com­mu­ni­ty wants the same lev­el of pro­tec­tion.

“So, for in­stance, there are those who just want a bar­ri­er at night from 10 pm that will re­strict per­sons from out­side en­ter­ing, and they want a cer­tain time to re­move that bar­ri­er. They have no is­sue with re­stric­tion dur­ing the day­light hours. Some of them want to just be able to mon­i­tor the ve­hi­cles that en­ter their com­mu­ni­ty and their space to note if there is a par­tic­u­lar ve­hi­cle that does not be­long to a res­i­dent or does not con­cern a res­i­dent that is reg­u­lar­ly scop­ing out the neigh­bour­hood.”

She added, “Of course, there are those that want a lit­tle more re­stric­tion where the res­i­dents would have pass­es, stick­ers for their ve­hi­cles, and so on.”

Guardian Me­dia then asked whether there are con­cerns this could lead to so­cial and racial seg­re­ga­tion, with some com­mu­ni­ties po­ten­tial­ly seek­ing to ex­clude cer­tain eth­nic groups or so­cial class­es from their neigh­bour­hoods.

But Min­is­ter Ameen sought to dis­miss that no­tion.

“They have not ap­plied for re­stric­tion by looks or by racial pro­file. What they have ap­plied for is that per­sons who are not res­i­dents or who are not vis­i­tors to res­i­dence, will not be au­to­mat­i­cal­ly al­lowed ac­cess. There has not been any group, any com­mu­ni­ty that has been ask­ing to re­strict peo­ple based on how they look.”

The min­is­ter, how­ev­er, ac­knowl­edged the premise of the ques­tion and added, “One of the things that I am very mind­ful of is that we must con­tin­ue, as a Gov­ern­ment, to en­sure that every creed and race, every so­cioe­co­nom­ic brack­et, is giv­en the same lev­el of pro­tec­tion in law. And, there­fore, I must em­pha­sise that this is not on­ly for built- up ar­eas or the sub­ur­banised ar­eas, this is for any com­mu­ni­ty that feels that hav­ing that type of re­stric­tion will make them safer.”