RHON­DOR DOWLAT 

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt 

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ shad­ow min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Roodal Mooni­lal, is call­ing for an im­me­di­ate and in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the dis­cov­ery of elec­tron­ic equip­ment worth hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars il­le­gal­ly mount­ed on util­i­ty poles in the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion (NCD). The CCTV cam­eras and wire­less routers are be­ing used by the crim­i­nal el­e­ment to mon­i­tor law en­force­ment agents.

“This must be launched to de­ter­mine the full scale of the il­le­gal elec­tron­ic ac­tiv­i­ty,” Mooni­lal said.

“One won­ders whether crim­i­nals are al­so mon­i­tor­ing the cour­t­hous­es as wit­ness­es come and go at­tend­ing crim­i­nal tri­als,” he added.

Mooni­lal said the in­quiry must al­so as­cer­tain how the equip­ment was il­le­gal­ly im­port­ed and in­stalled with­out the knowl­edge of the rel­e­vant agen­cies.

“This trou­bling mat­ter is an­oth­er in­di­ca­tion that or­gan­ised crim­i­nals are well-struc­tured and bet­ter equipped than the rel­e­vant se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies,” Mooni­lal said.

Mooni­lal de­scribed the il­le­gal in­stal­la­tion of elec­tron­ic equip­ment on util­i­ty poles as an­oth­er “crush­ing in­dict­ment on the hope­less­ly in­com­pe­tent Fitzger­ald Hinds as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.”

Mooni­lal said, “It again ex­pos­es Hinds’ chron­ic use­less­ness in en­sur­ing the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the trau­ma­tised peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He said the is­sue was a sur­re­al de­vel­op­ment in the na­tion’s pub­lic af­fairs and “once more re­veals how the in­ept Row­ley Gov­ern­ment has col­lapsed in the fight against the crime epi­dem­ic.”

Mooni­lal said, hav­ing called on Hinds to fix the hun­dreds of CCTV cam­eras be­long­ing to the State, “We now have a sit­u­a­tion where the crim­i­nals are more com­pe­tent in main­tain­ing ef­fec­tive elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance and cov­er­age over law en­force­ment per­son­nel.” 

He said, “It is fright­en­ing that Hinds and the Po­lice Ser­vice did not have in­tel­li­gence re­ports on the il­le­gal CCTV cam­eras and wire­less routers. But Hinds has been able to ma­noeu­vre ma­jor re­sources to hound Roger Best, the dis­placed di­rec­tor of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA). He has al­so utilised mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy to car­ry out sur­veil­lance on op­po­nents of the failed Row­ley regime.

“The Row­ley Gov­ern­ment has ex­haust­ed all its time, re­sources, and en­er­gy chas­ing down law­ful cit­i­zens who ob­tained le­gal firearms. While the in­tel­li­gence agen­cies have col­lapsed, the crim­i­nal un­der­world has shown more com­pe­tence and co-or­di­na­tion than the Gov­ern­ment. This is scan­dalous, in­cred­i­bly un­ten­able, and unimag­in­able.”

The UNC MP said Hinds must an­swer for his use­less­ness. 

“Fitzger­ald Hinds must go. He has proven to be a fail­ure in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. He can­not mon­i­tor a po­lice sta­tion or ra­dio sta­tion, a cour­t­house or an out­house!” Mooni­lal said

Mooni­lal not­ed that there has been no de­nial or ex­pla­na­tion of “this out­ra­geous­ly bold and sin­is­ter mat­ter.”