AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar does not see crime pub­lic health emer­gency.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke with re­porters at the Cari­com Re­gion­al Sym­po­sium: Vi­o­lence as a Pub­lic Health Is­sue – the Crime Chal­lenge cur­rent­ly tak­ing place at the Hy­att Re­gency. How­ev­er, she and oth­er mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion left the fo­rum short­ly af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s wel­come re­marks. They said they were on­ly in­vit­ed to at­tend the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny.

“It is not a pub­lic health is­sue, but I agree it caus­es pub­lic health is­sues,” she said.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley re­spond­ed to sev­er­al of the Op­po­si­tion’s crit­i­cisms in his open­ing re­marks, say­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion is not de­pen­dent on who is Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who re­peat­ed her call for Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds to step down, said: “You can’t keep mak­ing the same mis­takes every day, ex­pect­ing things to change. It is very clear Min­is­ter Hinds can­not do the job, but it is just not Hinds, it is the en­tire gov­ern­ment. To­day shows hope­less­ness.”

The Op­po­si­tion Leader said she was not im­pressed with the out­lined dis­cus­sions for the sym­po­sium but is hop­ing there will be an ac­tion plan by the end of the two-day event.

“Peo­ple are mor­tal­ly afraid. Yes, Cari­com can help us, but we have unique is­sues...Let’s re­move this in­com­pe­tent and wicked gov­ern­ment and let’s move for­ward and take our coun­try for­ward,” she said.

Cari­com Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Na­tal­ie Bar­nett said an ac­tion plan will be de­vel­oped by the end of the sym­po­sium for im­ple­men­ta­tion across the re­gion. She said most Cari­com lead­ers spend a lot of mon­ey to fight crime, lim­it­ing their fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tions to oth­er im­por­tant na­tion­al goals in the ed­u­ca­tion, health and so­cial ser­vices sec­tors.

“We are in the process of prepar­ing both a de­c­la­ra­tion and an ac­tion plan be­cause it is not on­ly about say­ing what we need to say, it’s about stat­ing how we’re go­ing to ac­tu­al­ly get it done. We are or­gan­is­ing to en­sure we en­list the sup­port of ex­perts across the re­gion as we pro­ceed for­ward,” Bar­nett said.