KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley wants Trinidad and To­ba­go to be­come a cash­less so­ci­ety as his Gov­ern­ment forges ahead with its dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion plans.

It’s a process he wants to see speed up, as he ex­pects it will help de­ter crim­i­nals.

Speak­ing at the Care­nage Po­lice Youth Club and Home­work Cen­tre yes­ter­day, Row­ley said, “I look for­ward to the day when Trinidad and To­ba­go will move to­wards be­ing a cash­less so­ci­ety and that will have a tremen­dous ef­fect on our pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, in­crease our se­cu­ri­ty, re­duce crim­i­nal con­duct and put us along­side the best in the world.”

Yet, even as he sees this de­vel­op­ment for the coun­try, Dr Row­ley, whose in­for­ma­tion was re­cent­ly dumped on the Dark Web by hack­ers who breached TSTT’s sys­tem, ad­mit­ted to hav­ing his own reser­va­tions for us­ing ATMS.

“I could tell you that I’ve nev­er used or with­drawn from an ATM. Not be­cause I don’t know that it’s there but maybe it’s be­cause I’ve come from too far to trust it,” he said.

There have been sev­er­al in­ci­dents this year in which peo­ple were robbed of hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars af­ter mak­ing with­drawals at ATMs.

In Ju­ly, ban­dits al­so stole $600,000 from an ATM in St James and trays of cash from an­oth­er an ATM in Pe­nal.

In Au­gust, a po­lice of­fi­cer was robbed at gun­point while us­ing an ATM in St Au­gus­tine.

In Sep­tem­ber, a pen­sion­er was robbed by gun­men short­ly af­ter leav­ing an ATM in Mar­aval.

And as re­cent as Oc­to­ber 31, the vault of a Sco­tia­bank ATM at the cor­ner of the South­ern Main Road and Pri­or­i­ty Bus route in Curepe was robbed by ban­dits pos­ing at se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers.