Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley stressed that na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty will re­main the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the gov­ern­ment, de­spite the an­nounce­ment by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) about the for­ma­tion of a To­ba­go Po­lice force.

Speak­ing the Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter event in To­ba­go last night, he ex­plained that the pre­vi­ous pro­pos­al for a To­ba­go Po­lice draft bill would have re­quired the gov­ern­ment to make a se­ries of amend­ments to var­i­ous laws, which was too com­plex at the time, about 15 years ago.

How­ev­er, Dr Row­ley said the gov­ern­ment is now look­ing at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mak­ing “man­age­able amend­ments” to the THA Act, sim­i­lar to the arrange­ments made for the mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions in Trinidad. "I have asked the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (Regi­nald Amour) to look at that and hope­ful­ly soon we could get some an­swers and see a path­way in To­ba­go get­ting the sec­ond lev­el of po­lice of­fi­cers."

The com­mis­sion­er of po­lice has beef up se­cu­ri­ty in To­ba­go which Dr Row­ley felt will help re­duce crime on the is­land. “There will be a unit of the In­ter-agency Task Force here in To­ba­go. These are po­lice of­fi­cers… They are spe­cial­ly trained. They act on fresh or grow­ing crim­i­nal threats."

He said there will al­so be a Guard and Emer­gency Branch unit on the is­land. Row­ley fur­ther in­di­cat­ed that the gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to find a prac­ti­cal so­lu­tion that would al­low To­ba­go to have an en­hanced role in polic­ing, with­in the ex­ist­ing le­gal and con­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work.