Rishard Khan

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds has called on the Op­po­si­tion to sup­port a bill to be tak­en to Par­lia­ment that will sub­ject var­i­ous arms of the min­istry and pub­lic of­fi­cers to reg­u­lar poly­graph­ing as part of in­tegri­ty tests.

Dur­ing his Bud­get de­bate con­tri­bu­tion on Mon­day, Hinds cit­ed the re­cent al­leged in­volve­ment of a sol­dier in the brazen Pen­ny­wise rob­bery that left two se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers dead and one fight­ing for her life at hos­pi­tal.

“We have man­dat­ed from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, all the heads of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty; De­fence Force, Fire, Pris­ons, Po­lice—every­body– Cus­toms, Im­mi­gra­tion, al­though Cus­toms is in (Min­istry of) Fi­nance, to en­sure, look in your ranks and if you find mis­cre­ants there, do what you must to get them out,” he said.

He said the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has man­dat­ed that prop­er and com­plete vet­ting must be done by its arms when re­cruit­ing new mem­bers.

This is why he said the bill for poly­graph test­ing will be rein­tro­duced.

“Hence the rea­son why we had to bring over from the last ses­sion to this one, a bill to make poly­graph­ing and in­tegri­ty test­ing on be­half of mem­bers of the Po­lice Ser­vice, the Fire Ser­vice, the Prison Ser­vice, the De­fence Force, the Cus­toms Di­vi­sion, Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion and cer­tain sec­tions of the pub­lic ser­vice to be sub­ject­ed to in­tegri­ty test­ing. Mod­ern meth­ods,” he said.

“Those are some of the things that we hope to get the sup­port of our friends (the op­po­si­tion) for in or­der to car­ry for­ward.”

Hinds al­so in­di­cat­ed im­proved meth­ods of crime con­trol and se­cur­ing the bor­ders will be im­ple­ment­ed in the new fis­cal year.