Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The op­po­si­tion is call­ing for an im­me­di­ate con­ven­ing of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to ad­dress the mur­der rate which, ac­cord­ing to Oropouche East MP Roodal Mooni­lal, is on track to be the high­est in his­to­ry. This week­end the coun­try crossed the 500 mur­der mark.

“Clear­ly the TTPS and the Gov­ern­ment have failed in pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens and it is not enough for Mr (Fitzger­ald) Hinds (Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty) to say that gang war­fare and il­le­gal guns in the coun­try—we knew of that long time ago—it is what are you do­ing,” Mooni­lal said at an Op­po­si­tion press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

“This is why this week the op­po­si­tion wrote Mr (Kei­th) Scot­land, chair­man of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to in­di­cate that we must have an emer­gency meet­ing be­cause these are un­prece­dent­ed times,” he said.

He said Scot­land agreed the mat­ters raised were im­por­tant and would be dis­cussed at the com­mit­tee’s next meet­ing.

“I was ter­ri­bly dis­ap­point­ed in this let­ter by Mr Scot­land. Ter­ri­bly be­cause there is no fixed date as yet for the next meet­ing of the JSC on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty,” he said.

“While we all have good in­ten­tions to meet soon, there is no date fixed.”

He said giv­en the cir­cum­stances, the com­mit­tee should have met im­me­di­ate­ly over this week­end to call for­ward the act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Prime Min­is­ter (who is the head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil) to ques­tion them on their plans to ad­dress crime.

“It’s re­al­ly a dis­ap­point­ment be­cause you would think that a...par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty would find them­selves ac­ti­vat­ed in these cir­cum­stances,” he said.

He said the ram­pant mur­ders and oth­er types of crimes be­ing com­mit­ted are ev­i­dence that the coun­try is un­po­liced.

“The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty must at­tend to the par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee to present their poli­cies, their ideas, their pro­grams,” he said.

Mooni­lal be­lieves the cur­rent state of af­fairs war­rants a joint TTPS and De­fence Force pres­ence on the ground.

“Every In­de­pen­dence morn­ing you go there, they come out with beau­ti­ful trucks and cars and equip­ment. They com­pound and pol­ish and buffer and thing and they show off every In­de­pen­dence morn­ing all this great equip­ment. Now is the time we need to get the co­or­di­na­tion be­tween the po­lice and the army to pa­trol this coun­try to en­sure that the crim­i­nal el­e­ments can­not go freely around with high-pow­ered weapons and so on to hold up cit­i­zens and to rob and to kill,” Mooni­lal said.