Gail Alexan­der

A foren­sic pathol­o­gist from In­dia will ar­rive in Trinidad and To­ba­go soon, the Coast Guard’s two Aus­tralian ves­sels will be com­mis­sioned in a few days and prison of­fi­cers will be get­ting a “safe house.”

This was re­vealed by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds be­fore Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee yes­ter­day, but he lost his cool when grilled by the Op­po­si­tion on the re­port­ed lack of fu­el for Coast Guard ves­sels.

Hinds’ min­istry has been al­lo­cat­ed $2.2 bil­lion in the 2022 Bud­get.

Hinds was in­ter­ro­gat­ed for sev­er­al hours by UNC MPs Sad­dam Ho­sein, Rod­ney Charles, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Ravi Ra­j­coomar, Rudy In­dars­ingh, Dave Tan­coo, David Lee, Dr Rai Rag­bir, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly and Kadi­jah Ameen.

He re­ceived sup­port from Min­is­ters Colm Im­bert (Fi­nance), Mar­vin Gon­za­les (Pub­lic Util­i­ties) and Faris Al-Rawi (At­tor­ney Gen­er­al).

Many Op­po­si­tion queries con­cerned de­creas­es in es­ti­mat­ed fund­ing and per­ceived “un­der­es­ti­mat­ed” al­lo­ca­tions.

Hinds had to re­peat­ed­ly ex­plain bud­get­ing pro­ce­dures, in­clud­ing how more funds are ob­tained.

On foren­sic pathol­o­gists - of which T&T on­ly has two of the re­quired four - Hinds said the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme had start­ed a re­cruit­ment process and out of this, a high­ly-qual­i­fied doc­tor from In­dia was iden­ti­fied.

“He’ll be prompt­ly here. We’ve al­so is­sued in­vi­ta­tions for young bright T&T cit­i­zens for schol­ar­ships which will be ad­ver­tised,” he added.

Hinds said he hasn’t re­ceived re­ports of any back­log of au­top­sies.

Charles pressed Hinds on re­ports of a body found on a south beach re­cent­ly and Coast Guard ves­sels be­ing un­able to go to the scene since they had no fu­el.

Hinds said he didn’t re­ply on “some­body say­ing some­thing in a news­pa­per, since that wasn’t the way a Gov­ern­ment be­haves.”

He said he re­lied on what the Coast Guard said and “may’’ pay at­ten­tion to news­pa­per ar­ti­cles.

Charles queried if a lack of fu­el pre­vent­ed the Coast Guard from be­ing able to deal with the Mau­ri­tan­ian ves­sel which drift­ed in­to T&T wa­ters with dead bod­ies on board ear­li­er this year.

Hinds said the ves­sel was seen by fish­er­men, who con­tact­ed the Coast Guard. He said mar­itime pro­ce­dure in­cludes ren­der­ing as­sis­tance to ves­sels and fish­er­men were asked to lend any as­sis­tance. They brought the ves­sel to shore, where he said the po­lice and Coast Guard took charge.

“It was wrong to sug­gest it had any­thing to do with ab­sence of fu­el, as the scan­dal-mon­ger­ing sug­gests,” Hinds de­clared.

“We have here (in the Par­lia­ment cham­ber) the se­nior Coast Guard com­man­der and he said there have been no re­ports of any lack of fu­el for any Coast Guard ves­sel. So you can con­tin­ue this ‘who say, dem say and she say’ drunk­e­ness!

“My friends on the oth­er side be­have as though there are no con­straints on the Ex­che­quer! The Min­is­ter (Fi­nance) has to take in­to ac­count T&T’s cir­cum­stances but they pre­tend COVID-19 doesn’t ex­ist...it’s reck­less!’’

Hinds con­tin­ued loud­ly say­ing how he’d had to re­peat ad nau­se­um how min­istries present plans seek­ing al­lo­ca­tions in the face of Bud­get di­vi­sion’s con­straints and pri­or­i­ties and how funds can be wired from oth­er min­istries or be sought in the mid-year re­view.

“T&T isn’t earn­ing as she used to... we’re not in a place where every­thing yuh want, you go­ing to get! We in a dif­fer­ent time to the heady days of 2010, 2011 to 2015!” Hinds added.

Hinds, cit­ing the River­ine and Coast Guard pa­trols, tech­ni­cal help and train­ing for fish­er­men, al­so de­nied there were is­sues with fish­er­men’s se­cu­ri­ty, since he said UNC’s Ra­j­coomar re­cent­ly com­pli­ment­ed him on this. Ra­j­coomar said, “That’s mis­lead­ing.”

Hinds de­nied Ra­j­coomar’s claim he promised to build a Coast Guard base in Cen­tral. Ra­j­coomar, who then lob­bied for a di­rect Min­istry line for Cen­tral fish­er­men, said Hinds was asleep re­cent­ly when his se­cu­ri­ty’s jeep hit a Mar­aval dog, Mar­ley.

Hinds coun­tered, say­ing Ra­j­coomar might need the di­rect line to “call one of his Venezue­lan busi­ness friends.”

Hinds al­so con­firmed:

• The Min­istry is cur­rent­ly in­debt­ed to the NIS on cer­tain sums for the De­fence Force; debt fig­ures are be­ing au­dit­ed by the TTDF to en­sure they‘re in ac­cor­dance with NIS lev­el. Ef­forts are be­ing made to en­sure the last change of NIS rates is re­flect­ed in what is owed. He said it wasn’t that mon­ey was de­duct­ed and not paid.

• Aus­tralian per­son­nel are here and have trained Coast Guard staff to op­er­ate the two new ves­sels.

• A build­ing’s be­ing re­pur­posed as a safe house for prison of­fi­cers.

• The Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison’s alarm is now be­ing re­done. Im­prove­ment on Re­mand block is 50 per cent fin­ished.

• 84 per cent of CCTV cam­eras are work­ing. This will be in­creased.

•Three peo­ple so far have been fit­ted with elec­tron­ic mon­i­tor­ing “bracelets”.

•The Fire Chief con­firms there’s no sit­u­a­tion where on­ly “half of the fire trucks” are work­ing.