RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has re­ceived a slight­ly big­ger piece of the na­tion­al Bud­get than it did last fis­cal year with $5.798 bil­lion, a fig­ure that’s just over last year’s bud­get al­lo­ca­tion.

In his fis­cal pre­sen­ta­tion yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert promised an in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy up­grade and ad­vance­ment for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

“We will be im­prov­ing de­ci­sion mak­ing and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by com­put­er­is­ing the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Head Of­fice, there­by in­creas­ing in­for­ma­tion col­lab­o­ra­tion, da­ta avail­abil­i­ty and da­ta analy­sis,” Im­bert said.

The T&T Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre will al­so be tech­no­log­i­cal­ly im­proved and ad­vanced with re­spect to bal­lis­tics.

“We are com­put­er­is­ing and im­prov­ing gov­er­nance in the T&T Foren­sic Sci­ences Cen­tre and up­grad­ing the in­te­grat­ed bal­lis­tics iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem with a view to­wards im­prov­ing ex­am­i­na­tion of all firearms-re­lat­ed ev­i­dence linked to firearm-re­lat­ed crimes.”

He added that there will be full digi­ti­sa­tion of ser­vice across di­vi­sions, which will im­prove the ef­fi­cien­cy of op­er­a­tions and even track the move­ment of ev­i­dence.

Im­bert al­so spoke of im­proved off­shore ca­pa­bil­i­ties with the pro­cure­ment of two Cape Class pa­trol ves­sels. He added that these ves­sels will be con­cen­trat­ing on build­ing on­shore ca­pa­bil­i­ties, with an elec­tri­cal up­grade for a con­tin­u­ous pow­er sup­ply to its Coast Guard fa­cil­i­ties to pro­vide a more ef­fi­cient and safe work­ing en­vi­ron­ment for per­son­nel, es­pe­cial­ly in event of na­tion­al dis­as­ters.

“We will al­so be up­grad­ing the shore pow­er sup­ply sys­tem of the Coast Guard base in To­ba­go, which, on com­ple­tion, will fa­cil­i­tate the berthing of the Cape Class ves­sels, which will now utilise the on­shore pow­er sup­ply in­stead of the ves­sels’ gen­er­a­tors, which will al­low for less down­time and a greater Coast Guard pres­ence in the mar­itime do­main,” Im­bert said.

In the Last Bud­get (2021-2022), Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty was al­lo­cat­ed $5.664 bil­lion.

Ac­cord­ing to Im­bert, the two Cape Class pa­trol ves­sels to be added to the fleet of T&T Coast Guard ves­sels will be able to trav­el longer dis­tances and re­main off­shore for longer pe­ri­ods con­duct­ing a wide range of op­er­a­tional ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, search and res­cue, pro­tec­tion of crit­i­cal en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture as well as coun­ter­ing all forms of il­le­gal traf­fick­ing.

Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty al­lo­ca­tions

2022-2023 $5.798 bil­lion

2021-2022 $5.664 bil­lion

2020-2021 $5.227 bil­lion

2019-2020 $6.44 bil­lion.

2018-2019 $6.120 bil­lion

2017-2018 $6.4 bil­lion