The top col­lec­tive pri­or­i­ty for all of us in T&T must be ad­dress­ing the crime cri­sis, four of this coun­try's ma­jor busi­ness cham­bers have said in a joint state­ment.

"As 2022 draws to a close, with a record num­ber of mur­ders, every sin­gle cit­i­zen is feel­ing the ef­fects of the crime cri­sis and many of us are liv­ing in fear even with­in our own homes. Deal­ing with crime will in­volve all of so­ci­ety and con­cert­ed ac­tion from many in­sti­tu­tions and in­di­vid­u­als, from Par­lia­ment to the Cab­i­net, to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, to the Po­lice Ser­vice, to the Cus­toms Di­vi­sion, to the Coast Guard, to the Ju­di­cia­ry, to re­li­gious lead­ers, to NGOs and right through to the choic­es made by pri­vate busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zens," the re­lease stat­ed.

"As the ma­jor rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, the Joint Cham­bers (Am­cham T&T, the En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, and

the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion) are com­mit­ted to play what­ev­er role we can to help ad­dress the crime sit­u­a­tion," it stat­ed.

The Joint Cham­bers stat­ed that in the past they of­ten lob­bied for changes to leg­is­la­tion or poli­cies in the hope that this would help law en­force­ment and the ju­di­cia­ry re­duce in­ci­dents of crime and im­prove the de­tec­tion and con­vic­tion rate.

The Joint Cham­bers stat­ed that many of its mem­bers have al­so sup­port­ed a large va­ri­ety of NGOs putting in place so­cial and youth de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes.

"We have put in place pro­grammes to strength­en cor­po­rate gov­er­nance and ad­dress cor­rup­tion and oth­er white-col­lar crimes that in some cas­es fu­el vi­o­lent crime. Giv­en the cur­rent cri­sis, it is im­per­a­tive that we all re­dou­ble our ef­forts to fight crime from all an­gles," the re­lease stat­ed.

"As we en­ter a new year, we will be in­ten­si­fy­ing our ef­forts and we will be reach­ing out to all stake­hold­ers to find ways that we can con­struc­tive­ly help bring the crime sit­u­a­tion un­der con­trol. The Joint Cham­bers re­main com­mit­ted to work­ing with all stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing those di­rect­ly re­spon­si­ble for tack­ling the crime sit­u­a­tion head-on, to re­solve the cri­sis we find our­selves in as a na­tion. We are firm­ly con­vinced that this is the coun­try’s num­ber one pri­or­i­ty as we en­ter in­to a new year," it stat­ed.