Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

With $6.1 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in the 2025 bud­get, in­clud­ing pro­vi­sions for 2,000 new ve­hi­cles and 12 Coast Guard ves­sels, se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert and for­mer head of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre Garvin Heer­ah says the men and women re­spon­si­ble for de­fend­ing, pro­tect­ing, and serv­ing must not on­ly be well-equipped to per­form their du­ties but must al­so be prop­er­ly com­pen­sat­ed.

Re­spond­ing to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s five-hour-plus 2025 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Heer­ah not­ed the sig­nif­i­cant al­lo­ca­tion of $6.1 bil­lion to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

He added, “It’s im­por­tant that the peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for the roll­out of how this mon­ey is go­ing to be di­vert­ed and spent pri­ori­tise the morale and wel­fare of the men and women in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. This in­cludes the de­fence force, fire ser­vices, po­lice ser­vice, im­mi­gra­tion, and all oth­er re­lat­ed agen­cies.

“But the men and women, of­ten re­gard­ed as su­per­heroes, who are now be­ing asked to per­form un­der these chal­leng­ing con­di­tions, have been work­ing un­der harsh cir­cum­stances for the past few years. They have con­sis­tent­ly been re­quest­ing bet­ter in­fra­struc­ture to sup­port their ef­forts.”

On calls for them to be well-com­pen­sat­ed, he said, “These are the same peo­ple who are fac­ing the ris­ing cost of fu­el, emp­ty shelves, and the strug­gles of car­ing for a cry­ing child they need to take to the doc­tor, along with chal­lenges in se­cur­ing books and deal­ing with is­sues re­lat­ed to their own per­son­al wel­fare, hous­ing and ac­com­mo­da­tion, in fact, are sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns for them as well.”

He al­so said unan­nounced ‘mys­tery shop­per’ vis­its to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies are es­sen­tial to as­sess ser­vice­abil­i­ty and ad­dress in­fra­struc­ture is­sues. An­nounced vis­its can lead to pre­arranged re­spons­es, while unan­nounced vis­its pro­vide a true pic­ture of what’s hap­pen­ing with­in these agen­cies, of­fer­ing in­valu­able in­sights akin to our dis­cus­sions back in 2016.

Heer­ah said de­spite all the mon­ey be­ing al­lo­cat­ed, fear has tak­en hold in T&T. “To tru­ly mit­i­gate the im­pact of crime on our econ­o­my, we need to fo­cus on re­duc­ing that fear. This con­ver­sa­tion is es­sen­tial, and we are more than ready to en­gage in it.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia af­ter the bud­get, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds stat­ed that the bud­get was a good one lead­ing in­to the gen­er­al elec­tion next year.

Hinds ex­plained, “Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty has emerged as one of the ma­jor re­cip­i­ents of pub­lic fund­ing, and we will con­tin­ue to al­lo­cate those re­sources in the best in­ter­ests of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing in so­ci­ety and are re­spond­ing ac­cord­ing­ly, as ex­plained by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and my­self, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.”