Renu­ka Singh

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty will go ahead with the pur­chase of some 80 Sport Util­i­ty Ve­hi­cles for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds at­tend­ed yes­ter­day's Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee in­to his Min­istry and briefly out­lined the al­lo­ca­tion for the ve­hi­cles.

"The plan is to pur­chase 100 ve­hi­cles, marked SUV's, un­marked SUV's, marked sedans, un­marked sedans," Hinds said, adding that there is al­so a plan to pur­chase 12 ve­hi­cles for To­ba­go.

Hinds said the TTPS cur­rent fleet stands at 1,905 and of that some 1,181 are op­er­a­tional. The bal­ance, 724 are out of ser­vice.

"Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 500 of those ve­hi­cles are con­sid­ered to be suf­fi­cient­ly un­ser­vice­able to re­quire dis­pos­al," Hinds said,

Back in Ju­ly dur­ing the open­ing of the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said that a note was brought to Cab­i­net seek­ing ap­proval to pur­chase some 80 SUV's cost­ing some $22 mil­lion and he im­me­di­ate­ly di­rect­ed a re­vi­sion of that fig­ure. Row­ley said then that the price was too high and those types of SUV's were not nec­es­sary.

The re­cent­ly launched River­ine and Coastal pa­trol unit un­der the TTPS was on­ly al­lo­cat­ed $29,000 for the next fis­cal year.

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Na­pari­ma, Rod­ney Charles ques­tioned the low­ly al­lo­ca­tion.

"My un­der­stand­ing is that the prob­lem is sig­nif­i­cant, you have end­less re­ports of hu­man traf­fick­ing, drugs, il­le­gal im­mi­grants etc. How many ves­sels are there in this Coastal and River­ine Pa­trol Unit, what are the op­ti­mal num­bers of ve­hi­cles and is this fig­ure in any way ad­e­quate," he asked.

Hinds said there were cur­rent­ly two river­ine ves­sels and two coastal pa­trol ves­sels.

"That has to be a joke," Charles coun­tered.

"Two ves­sels? and two oth­ers for all of T&T?" Charles said.

The meet­ing then de­volved in­to a po­lit­i­cal one.

"Ap­par­ent­ly the Mem­ber did not know that be­fore the pub­lic chased them out of of­fice," Hinds said.

Hinds was again asked about the in­fra­struc­ture for this unit and ex­plained that the Coastal and River­ine Unit was on­ly es­tab­lished to pa­trol and op­er­ate around the two-mile ra­dius around the coast.

"This is a brand new, very pow­er­ful ef­fort on the part of the po­lice ser­vice to as­sist in the man­age­ment and con­trol of the af­fairs of our bor­ders. We are now start­ing out," Hinds said.

He said that the Unit was al­so staffed with 50 per­son­nel.

Hinds al­so re­vealed that on­ly three peo­ple have been fit­ted with elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing since the pro­gramme was fi­nalised some two months ago.

The Elec­tron­ic Mon­i­tor­ing Sys­tem was pegged at $10 mil­lion in the last bud­get and was just $800,000 this year, a sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er sum. That drop in al­lo­ca­tion was raised at the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing yes­ter­day to dis­cuss the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

The Min­istry re­ceived an over­all al­lo­ca­tion of over $2.2 bil­lion.

Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­lad Hinds and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert at­tend­ing the ses­sion yes­ter­day.

When Hinds an­nounced the small num­ber of peo­ple "wired up", Oropouche East MP Dr Roo­da Mooni­lal want­ed more de­tails.

"But the project it­self in­volves much more than three per­sons? It was a rather ex­pan­sive project," Mooni­lal said.

Hinds said that thus far, on­ly three peo­ple have been or­dered by the court to be mon­i­tored elec­tron­i­cal­ly.

"The en­tire sys­tem is in place, up and func­tion­al. And it closed this coun­try just about $10 mil­lion with no sug­ges­tion of any un­to­ward be­hav­iour," Hinds said.