The cold-blood­ed killings at the Heights Gua­napo have placed T&T un­der a more dread­ful state of siege with ram­pant pan­ic and fear - and the fail­ure to re­move Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds will mean that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has no con­cern for cit­i­zens’ safe­ty and wel­fare.

This was the de­c­la­ra­tion yes­ter­day by Op­po­si­tion na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty spokesman Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.

And UNC MP Rod­ney Charles, be­rat­ing Hinds and Row­ley on the sit­u­a­tion, said dur­ing Hinds’ term as Min­is­ter, re­ports of mass mur­ders have steadi­ly in­creased.

The Op­po­si­tion’s con­cerns were voiced af­ter yes­ter­day’s ear­ly morn­ing killing of four sib­lings, ages 10 to 17, and the wound­ing of five of their rel­a­tives in the Heights of Gua­napo.

Mooni­lal said, “The lat­est ghast­ly mass mur­ders and a new round of trav­el ad­vi­sories from de­vel­oped coun­tries are fur­ther com­pelling rea­sons for Min­is­ter’s Hinds’ im­me­di­ate dis­missal.

“This Min­is­ter, made in­fa­mous by his sleepy im­agery, has presided over un­par­al­leled law­less­ness. We can no longer blame on­ly low lev­el law en­force­ment per­son­nel but must hold the po­lit­i­cal man­agers ac­count­able.

“Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley must aban­don his ar­ro­gance and con­ceit and sack Mr Hinds, the most dis­as­trous Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter in T&T’s his­to­ry - clear­ly the $3. m crime sym­po­sium at the Hy­att has led to ab­solute­ly no pos­i­tive change in the fight against the new breed of heinous crim­i­nals that stalk our land.”

Mooni­lal said the Gua­napo homi­cides fol­lowed up­dat­ed trav­el ad­vi­sories from the US and Cana­da, warn­ing their cit­i­zens about unchecked crime lo­cal­ly.

De­tail­ing the ad­vi­sories, Mooni­lal said, “These strin­gent ad­vi­sories rep­re­sent a fur­ther di­rect blow to T&T’s de­clin­ing econ­o­my, es­pe­cial­ly with re­spect to the strug­gling tourism in­dus­try and di­rect for­eign in­vest­ments.

“These force­ful warn­ings, along with the un­ceas­ing mur­ders and oth­er bloody crimes, make it in­com­pre­hen­si­ble that the in­com­pe­tent Mr Hinds still heads the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty port­fo­lio.”

Charles said re­ports of the Gua­napo ex­e­cu­tion-styled killings of chil­dren and youths re­flect the sys­temic col­lapse of all in­sti­tu­tions.

“Our schools, TTPS, un­pa­trolled, porous bor­ders, fail­ing so­cial safe­ty nets, in­creas­ing pover­ty, ris­ing home­less­ness, lim­it­ed job op­por­tu­ni­ties for thou­sands leav­ing schools, seem­ing in­abil­i­ty to deal with ris­ing men­tal ill­ness­es among cit­i­zens, lack of struc­tured, well-re­sourced sport­ing pro­grammes and even short­ages in for­eign ex­change, lead­ing to an un­reg­u­lat­ed black mar­ket with all its at­ten­dant crim­i­nal op­por­tu­ni­ties, are all linked to what took place in Gua­napo,” Charles said.

Charles said sim­i­lar­ly, Hinds is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Cab­i­net’s clue­less­ness.

“Dur­ing Hinds’ term as Min­is­ter, re­ports of mass mur­ders have steadi­ly in­creased. This year, we record­ed 11 mur­ders over one Au­gust week­end. We saw 11 mur­ders at the end of Jan­u­ary, sev­en mur­dered on Car­ni­val Sat­ur­day, six in two days in June. Last week­end, four were killed in 24 hours. Have we now en­tered a fright­en­ing realm of mass killings?

“Crime has reached a new lev­el of bru­tal­i­ty. This PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion seems in­ca­pable of un­der­stand­ing the in­ex­tri­ca­ble link be­tween in­sti­tu­tion­al col­lapse and out of con­trol crime. Do Row­ley, Hinds, Young, Im­bert or Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly recog­nise that if they fail to dis­charge their func­tions ef­fec­tive­ly, the net re­sult is in­creased may­hem and gang­ster-styled mur­ders?”

Charles added, “Talk, talk and more talk won’t solve crime. What is des­per­ate­ly need­ed is a strate­gic, out­puts-ori­ent­ed, a com­pre­hen­sive all-of-agency ap­proach that weeds out rogue TTPS el­e­ments, re­duces po­lice re­sponse times, rein­vig­o­rates com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing, in­creas­es de­tec­tion rates, re­duces prison over­crowd­ing and re­cidi­vism rates and im­proves trust be­tween cit­i­zens and po­lice. “

Hinds didn’t re­ply to What­sApped mes­sages sent for com­ment on the is­sue yes­ter­day.