CHARLES KONG SOO

The San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion’s Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice re­ceived a brand new Toy­ota Hilux 4x4 pick­up on Fri­day to as­sist in the fight against crime in the re­gion.

On hand to re­ceive the keys were the cor­po­ra­tion mu­nic­i­pal po­lice’s In­spec­tor An­tho­ny White, ac­com­pa­nied by WPC Per­sad, WPC Shar­ma Alexan­der, PC Ruth­man and PC De­las.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Anil Juter­am said, “The cor­po­ra­tion’s mu­nic­i­pal po­lice were lack­ing a lot in terms of mo­bil­i­ty. I’m al­so chair­man of the Se­cu­ri­ty and En­force­ment com­mit­tee, we made rec­om­men­da­tions al­most two years ago to have an ad­di­tion­al ve­hi­cle for the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice.

“There has been an in­crease in crime in the area due to un­planned de­vel­op­ment tak­ing place. San­gre Grande has 43 un­planned de­vel­op­ments, as a close-knit com­mu­ni­ty, we’re not ac­cus­tomed to this type of be­hav­iour.”

He added, “We want to try our ut­most to do our part work­ing to­geth­er with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice in cer­tain hotspots to keep il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties such as il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, drug blocks, peo­ple oc­cu­py­ing oth­er peo­ple’s prop­er­ty and oth­er crimes un­der con­trol in our once pris­tine town.

“In that as­pect, we asked for a Toy­ota Hilux be­cause of the ter­rain and re­mote, rur­al ar­eas it would have to op­er­ate in, such as Tamana, Matelot, To­co, Caigual, and the av­er­age po­lice ve­hi­cle would not be able to tra­verse some of those roads.”

He said the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice will al­so be called up­on to in­ter­cept ve­hi­cles on dif­fer­ent road sur­faces, adding the Hilux was geared for this pur­pose and al­so for pa­trols at night, in­clud­ing re­spond­ing to dis­as­ters and emer­gen­cies such as flood­ing, food re­lief and bridge col­laps­es.

Juter­am said fund­ing for the ve­hi­cle came via one of the cor­po­ra­tion’s de­vel­op­men­tal projects re­spon­si­ble for se­cu­ri­ty and en­force­ment.

He ex­plained that this was the re­mit of the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice to pro­tect burgess­es, cor­po­ra­tion as­sets, com­pounds, ceme­ter­ies, play­grounds, recre­ation­al grounds and ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ings.

Juter­am thanked the cor­po­ra­tion’s CEO Bet­ty Ann Di­al and its en­gi­neer, Ke­ston Ali, ex­press­ing his grat­i­tude for the ve­hi­cle to be used for crime mit­i­ga­tion. He said he hoped the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice will al­so main­tain and care for the ve­hi­cle.

He al­so hoped that it will make a dif­fer­ence com­ple­ment­ing the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice’s oth­er ve­hi­cles, as some were down and due for re­pairs.

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