The new­ly mint­ed Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Kei­th Scot­land, SC, who took his oath of of­fice at the Pres­i­dent’s House yes­ter­day, says his num­ber one pri­or­i­ty is restor­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Scot­land was ac­com­pa­nied by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, his daugh­ter Krys­tian­na Scot­land and friend Ir­ma David at the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny.

A high-pri­or­i­ty area Scot­land in­tends to tar­get is crime re­duc­tion and im­prov­ing con­fi­dence in the po­lice ser­vice, which was at eight per cent in Feb­ru­ary.

Fol­low­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, the re­cent­ly ap­point­ed se­nior coun­cil field­ed ques­tions from the me­dia as he de­clared that he was con­fi­dent in his abil­i­ty to make a dif­fer­ence.

“I feel up to it ... I re­al­ly think that my back­ground in so­ci­ol­o­gy, crim­i­nal law, teach­ing restora­tive jus­tice, deal­ing with PoS South ... I think that that ex­pe­ri­ence over the last four years, and be­fore, would have pre­pared me for this new task that I’ve been as­signed.”

His first or­der of busi­ness is to meet with in­ter­nal stake­hold­ers this morn­ing. Lat­er in the day, he plans to vis­it one part of his con­stituen­cy, and next week, he will meet with the top cop and the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion. “There is a plan in place, and that will be dis­cussed with them and rolled out very short­ly,” he as­sured. On Thurs­day, Dr Row­ley an­nounced that Scot­land would be ap­point­ed as a Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

Scot­land, whose con­stituen­cy bor­ders ar­eas of high con­flict, hopes that this new po­si­tion will en­able him to be more ef­fec­tive in that role.

“It dif­fers in the sense that when I meet with cer­tain per­sons in the com­mu­ni­ty, I’m able to speak to them from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, and as I said be­fore, the main aim has to be the re­duc­tion of crime.” 

He, how­ev­er, not­ed that he has no nu­mer­i­cal tar­gets yet.

Hinds: I’m not dis­tract­ed, says he’s very hap­py about the move

Com­ment­ing on Hinds’ per­for­mance dur­ing the an­nounce­ment, Dr Row­ley said, “The min­is­ter was be­ing dis­tract­ed by too many oth­er things when we want­ed more fo­cus­ing on the po­lice at this par­tic­u­lar point in time.” While Hinds wel­comed his col­league, he dis­agreed with the Prime Min­is­ter when asked if he felt too dis­tract­ed to man­age the TTPS. He said, “No, all I feel about this is very, very wel­comed and hap­py be­cause there’s so much work to be done. I hope Trinidad and To­ba­go by now be­gin to un­der­stand that talk, crit­i­cism and bac­cha­nal­ing don’t solve our prob­lems. What it calls for is work, and Mr Scot­land’s pres­ence in here sim­ply means that we will be able to do more work in this re­gard, and that’s what we are about.”

Con­se­quent­ly, Hinds does not con­sid­er him­self de­mot­ed, as he re­mains in charge of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. Robin­son-Reg­is al­so de­fend­ed her cab­i­net col­league, rub­bish­ing the as­ser­tion that Dr Row­ley lost con­fi­dence in him.

She said, “In­ter­est­ing­ly, it took quite some time be­fore the Prime Min­is­ter felt that there was a need to put a sec­ond min­is­ter in the min­istry of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, and that speaks vol­umes. Clear­ly, the Prime Min­is­ter has very high ex­pec­ta­tions of Min­is­ter Hinds, and he has def­i­nite­ly not lost con­fi­dence in him. Be­cause it’s the Prime Min­is­ter who could re­move and place min­is­ters, and if he had lost con­fi­dence, he would have re­moved Min­is­ter Hinds. He has not done that.”

Hinds fur­ther ex­plained that there was lit­tle dif­fer­ence be­tween him­self and Scot­land, as they both have the same pur­pose, “to rep­re­sent the peo­ple.”  Al­though the Prime Min­is­ter was present, he did not stick around af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny to re­spond to any ques­tions.

Who’s in charge of what?

Scot­land’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ties:

Scot­land is now re­spon­si­ble for the TTPS; of­fend­er man­age­ment; il­le­gal im­mi­grants; drug traf­fick­ing; and mon­ey laun­der­ing. 

Hinds’ re­spon­si­bil­i­ties:

Dr Row­ley read a laun­dry list of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties un­der Hinds’ purview to jus­ti­fy his de­ci­sion, which in­cludes pro­tect­ing T&T’s air­space and ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters; the cadet force; cit­i­zen­ship; the de­fence force (reg­i­ment, coast guard, air guard); de­fence force re­serves; drug en­force­ment in­ter­dic­tion; foren­sic ser­vices; DNA ser­vices; glob­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sues; im­mi­gra­tion; in­tel­li­gence; in­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty; dis­as­ter man­age­ment, and much more.

The coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty will now be man­aged by the Dr Row­ley-led Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, Hinds and Scot­land.